Hello everyone On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 7:05 AM, X Acto <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Dan to John: > > For the record, the ghosts that RMP speaks of in ZMM have to do with > social and intellectual patterns of value, not spirits or the soul. In > fact, he equates the theory(s) of gravity with those ghosts. > > Ron: > He also equated the idea of the self in a similar manner. > The idea of selfhood is often linked to the concept of spirit > or soul. In this way MoQ does not conflict, embedded in a larger > system of thought.
Dan: Yes you're right, though he only mentions "soul" 2 times in LILA and not using the connotations you are. And he uses the term "spirit" more as a literary device than one with religious overtones. I did find this in ZMM: "The Chairman is right. It is an immortal dialogue, strange and puzzling at first, but then hitting you harder and harder, like truth itself. What Phædrus has been talking about as Quality, Socrates appears to have described as the soul, self-moving, the source of all things." [ZMM] Dan comments: Here he seems to be equating Socrates idea of soul with Dynamic Quality, though he doesn't use those words in ZMM as he does in LILA. In LILA, it seems clear he equates the idea of God with social patterns of value, thus his Copleston annotations are better understood, I think: "To the early Calvinists and to ourselves too this debasement of the word seems outrageous, but it becomes understandable when one sees that within the Victorian pattern of values society was God. As Edith Wharton said, Victorians feared scandal worse than they feared disease. They had lost their faith in the religious values of their ancestors and put their faith in society instead. It was only by wearing the corset of society that on oneself from lapsing back into a condition of evil. Formalism and prudery were as to suppress evil by denying it a place in one's "higher" thoughts, and for the Victorian, higher spiritually meant higher socially. There was no distinction between the two. "God is a gentleman through and through, and in all probability, Episcopal too." To be a gentleman was as close as you would ever get, while on earth, to God." [LILA] "Good old technology. All this twentieth century sanity wasn't as interesting as the old days of his incarceration but he was getting a lot more accomplished, at a social level at least. Other cultures may talk to idols and animal spirits and fissures in rocks and ghosts of the past but it wasn't for him. He had other things to do." [LILA} Dan comments: In the first quote, he links higher spirituality with higher social standing. To be a gentleman is to believe in God. In the second quote, he declares while other cultures may believe in spirits and souls, it isn't to be included in the MOQ. If you have a different take, I would love to hear it. Thank you, Dan Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
