Hello everyone On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 6:36 PM, David Harding <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi Dan, > > >> Right - so our ideas are based in our culture and a simple change of > mind > >> will clearly not change our reality? > >> > > > > Hi David > > > > The discussion is becoming too unwieldy for me to continue, plus you seem > > to be making a lot of erroneous assumptions about who I am and what I am > > saying. Although I have repeated myself many times, you do not seem to be > > grasping my words. The above reply is an example. > > > > You continue to insist on 'simple' when nothing is simple. Later, you > > introduce the notion of experience as a third category in the MOQ when I > > have repeatedly offered you the quote from Lila's Child about experience > > and Dynamic Quality becoming synonymous. How on earth can experience be a > > third category when it becomes synonymous with experience? > > Dan wrote previously: > > "Also, I do not believe I ever said experience is DQ. That is something > you said I said. No, I said in the MOQ, Dynamic Quality and experience > become synonymous. There is a difference and this might be the block over > which you are stumbling. Or not." > > If something is going to make sense intellectually - it has to be > consistent. The MOQ divides our reality up into the two categories of DQ > and sq. To be logically consistent experience must be either DQ or sq or > as I argue - both and the same thing as 'reality' > You argue that it is neither DQ or sq. If it is neither then it doesn't > fit into the two *fundamental* divisions of the MOQ and must therefore be > in a third category which we haven't discussed. > Dan: I have always assumed we are talking about the MOQ. In the MOQ, experience and Dynamic Quality become synonymous. There is no inconsistency here. The inconsistency arises when you mistakenly assign experience to both Dynamic Quality and static quality and then argue experience must be one or the other or both. Dynamic Quality does not fit into any encyclopedia, however. And if Dynamic Quality and experience become synonymous, then experience as the term is used in the MOQ will not fit into any encyclopedia either. Experience and Dynamic Quality become synonymous. So how can experience be a third category apart from Dynamic Quality and static quality? That, my friend, does not make any sense, and so it seems as if it is non-sense. Now, I realize you can open a dictionary and find the term 'experience' in it. However, the definition in any dictionary will not fit together with how the term 'experience' is used in the MOQ. > > In the MOQ reality = experience = Quality. There is no more to reality > than this. This Quality/experience/reality is broken up into the two > categories of DQ and sq… Dan: No. The Quality of ZMM has become the Dynamic Quality of Lila. If you keep that in mind it may help. > This is why what we call DQ and sq are *both* a part of > reality/experience/Quality. Dan: Do you have a mouse in your pocket or are you using the 'royal' we? I do not call Dynamic Quality and static quality part of reality/experience/Quality. That only leads to confusion. Better to say Dynamic Quality and experience become synonymous in the MOQ. Static quality emerges from experience. Static quality isn't experience. It is a memory of experience, a definition of experience, but not experience. > But as soon as we say that DQ is this or DQ is that then it isn't DQ and > is thus static quality. Any real talk about what DQ is - is fruitless.. Dan: Not at all. In the MOQ, Dynamic Quality and experience become synonymous. > It's easier to talk about what it is not than what it is… So all these > 'Terms' about reality are really just sq but what they describe in each > instance is different. > Dan: What static quality patterns describe is the past, not each instant. By the time definition has emerged, the instant has moved on. > > > > > You insist that according to the MOQ we experience static quality. You've > > lifted quotes from Lila to bolster that opinion and yet you fail to see > > where such a notion leads: right back to subjects observing objects as > > primary values. > > I think a clear distinction needs to be made here between my saying that > *we* experience static quality and my statement that static quality is a > part of experience… > > In the first instance, this is a subject observing some other static > quality.. It presumes a pre-existing static quality subject experiencing > some other static quality.. In the second instance however, I'm merely > stating that static quality exists - for that which isn't experienced > doesn't exist. > Dan: Well, again, this is a mistaken notion and not anything Robert Pirsig has said. Lots of things exist which are not experienced. Look up at the night sky: there is a good probability that each star you see has planets circling it which no one has ever experienced. Yet as bigger and better telescopes come into being, researchers will confirm their existence. Look down at your hands. Centuries ago, no one experienced a germ or a virus. They believed in black magic and how a witch had put a hex upon them and that is why they fell ill. Now, we know germs and viruses are everywhere. When we get sick we understand it is not because of a hex but because of a germ or a virus invading our body and infecting us with a disease. And you accuse me of being an idealist? Really? > > And given that we both know that the MOQ includes static quality - static > quality experience is very much a part of the MOQ. In fact RMP even uses > the term 'static experience' in Lila's Child. > > "Static experience and static awareness are easily separated. Dynamic > anything is not." - LC > Dan: Well, yes. He is writing down to the reader here. He does the same thing in Lila. Are we not obligated to attempt to reach up to him? > > > This latest refusal to understand what I am saying leads me to believe I > am > > wasting my time here. I've spent many hours working on my replies to you > > and yet you do not seem to read them and/or comprehend what I am saying. > > I could so easily say the same thing Dan. I spend days composing > responses to your writing. I think about what you write and carefully > craft a response.. The reason why I don't complain that you don't > understand me is because I'm grateful that we are able to discuss the MOQ > to begin with. Despite the plethora of discussions on this board I don't > think I've ever seen true agreement between folks who initially disagreed. > I mean, that's the whole point of discussing is it not? I'm very curious > to see if two people who approach this discussion honestly can ever find > agreement. > > I'm also open to your ideas being better than mine. I'm continually > asking you questions to try and understand where you're coming from so that > I can find some coherence and beauty and potentially something better. I'm > also continually telling you how I see things so that you can do the same.. > But unfortunately as this above statement of yours shows.. You don't seem > too interested in what I'm saying.. It's all about my inability to read or > comprehend what *you're* saying.. I'm asking questions Dan. I'm trying.. > Can't you do the same? Can't we just accept that we're both trying to > understand one another and as a result our ideas will improve? > Dan: If you were not doing this, what would you be doing? > > This reminds me of a German fable I heard retold recently… It's about a > dying peasant who told his sons that he has buried a treasure in the fields: > > "After the old man's death the sons dig everywhere in order to discover > the treasure. They do not find it. But their indefatigable labor improves > the soil and secures for them a comparative well-being." > Dan: Yeah, but I bet they would have been a lot happier if they had found the old miser's stash, huh? :) > > > You feel that if we could wish the world into being what we want it to > be, > > the world would be a far different place. What you fail to realize is > that > > we are doing just that every moment of our lives. What we wish, however, > > has been beaten into us from the very beginning. The static quality > > patterns of our lives are constrained into being what we know them to be. > > It is all but impossible to break free of that knowing, especially if one > > is blind. > > > > The first step is to wake up, to open one's eyes and see that the world > is > > not separate and apart from us. We create the world and then tell > > ourselves it is separate and apart from us and we have no influence upon > > it. We know for a fact the world exists independently of us and has done > so > > way before we were born and will continue to do so long after we pass > away. > > > > Even when someone comes along to tell us this isn't so, we fight it. > > Consider of all the books that have been written on this very subject: > > Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor > > Frankl, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, The > Book > > of Wisdom by the Dalai Lama, Anthony Robbins' Personal Classic, and on > and > > on and on. > > I don't deny, aside from the one Mystic you mentioned, that there are > those who seek to profit off the idea that everything is an idea and that > all you need to do to change your reality is just change your mind. They're > not wrong - everything they have ever heard - or I have ever heard is an > idea This can indeed be a very liberating thought. Especially if you have > lived your whole life thinking that there is a reality 'out there' that > exists beyond our thoughts about it and that no matter what you think that > 'reality' cannot change. This is a very depressing thought and many folks > to this day are stuck with it.. To think that you aren't a figment of my > imagination or to think that the room I sit in now is not just a figment of > my imagination isn't an incorrect thought. It can't be any other way. Dan: So doing away with the negatives, you seem to be saying to think I am a figment of your imagination or the room where you sit now is just a figment of your imagination is a correct thought. Yet at the same time, others who write about such things are only seeking to profit off that idea. I do a bit of scribbling myself. I do so without any thought of profit. I believe most writers are much the same: Dale Carnegie taught night classes at a community college for years while working in business during the days. In an interview, he said he began writing because he thought he could reach more people that way, not because he thought he could make money from it. Napoleon Hill spent years interviewing the most successful people of his era, interacting with them, learning from them. He had already engineered some of the most brilliant business deals in history before he ever wrote his books. He had no need of money. So why did he write his books? For profit? Really? Viktor Frankl survived the death camps in Germany during WWII while millions of others perished including nearly his whole family. Do you honestly think he wrote his books with the motive of profit in his mind? I find that rather sad and discomforting, especially when I read words like this: "We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us." "That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. "A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: *The salvation of man is through love and in love.* I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory." [Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl] Are these the words of a man writing for profit? I think not. Nor did Robert Pirsig write his books for profit. I recall an interview where he said his publisher gave him $3000 in advance for ZMM and told him that was more than likely all the money he would ever see from it. He spent four years writing ZMM! That hardly seems like much of a profit to me. Of course we know ZMM became a best seller but he had no way of knowing that it would while he was writing it. > But have you ever heard of the Anthony Robbins firewalking incident? > Dan: Anthony Robbins is probably the most obnoxious man you'll ever have the fortune to meet. He bristles with energy from 6am till way past midnight. While the rest of us mortals were falling asleep in our chairs that man was still holding forth. I don't know if you realize it, but literally tens of thousands of people have participated in the fire walks. And you think it is news that few of them got a couple blisters from it? That would be rather hilarious if it wasn't so disheartening. Do you have any idea how cool it is to walk across a bed of hot coals? The thrill it gives a person knowing they can do something they thought impossible? Probably not... > > > http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_21125630/san-jose-21-people-treated-burns-after-firewalk > > While idealists like to think that such 'fire walking' demonstrates the > power of a change in mind - it really just shows the power(or lack thereof) > of conductive science… That's why - the MOQ adds - it is a *good* idea to > think that the hot coals under your feet do indeed exist before you think > about them… Especially if there's a queue on the hot coals and you're > stuck there for more than a few seconds... > Dan: See, you think the hot coals actually exist separately and apart from you. That is the whole point of the endeavor, to show folks that it isn't so, that if they change their attitude, the world changes with it. > > So because of the social and intellectual quality of the idea that matter > and people exist before we think about them - I operate under this > assumption.. But there are times I don't as well - Quantum physics for > example - that's a good start - and in a discussion like the one we are > having now about what's more fundamental - matter or ideas - these are > times when I don't operate under the quality assumption that matter exists > before we think about it... > > > You are saying all these thinkers are wrong. Robert Pirsig is wrong. > > I don't think that Robert Pirsig is wrong.. However you appear to disagree > with his statement in the Copleston annotations: > > "Since Bradley was always classified as an idealist, it did not seem > important to investigate him thoroughly because the MOQ rejects the > metaphysical assertion that the fundamental reality of the world is idea." > Dan: Well, again, this is an example of why I have a hard time proceeding with our previous discussion. I cannot count the times I have said experience comes first in the MOQ, and in the MOQ, experience and Dynamic Quality become synonymous. Static quality emerges from experience, which is why I keep writing to you that it is a not good idea to say we experience static quality. By saying we experience static quality, we are making static quality primary, which of course is exactly what you say it is. But that is not in agreement with the MOQ, even if you think Robert Pirsig's thoughts on this are ugly. So why are you saying that I am disagreeing with the above passage? Where did you ever get the idea I am saying ideas are fundamental? Because I am trying to tell you that your attitude can change the world? That has nothing to do with ideas being fundamental. It would appear to me you grasping at straws here. > > > And > > yet any one of these books, if read and put into practice, would totally > > transform one's life. But more, one would come to realize that no book is > > necessary. One would see that we create our own reality: whatever we > think > > it is, or wish it to be, it becomes. There is no separation between the > > world and us. > > > > This is exactly what Robert Pirsig is on about in both his books and all > > his subsequent writings. If you take that one little sentence about the > > world existing within the human imagination AND UNDERSTAND IT, it would > be > > one of those rare 'ah ha!' moments that come along once or twice in a > > lifetime. > > The first time I understood idealism it was indeed one of those rare 'ah > ha!' moments.. But it never 100% jibed with me because I had always thought > the idea that I could simply change my mind and objective reality would > change with it seemed(and still does seem) counter-intuitive.. The MOQ > provides a broader perspective which includes Quality. The MOQ > encapsulates the materialism/idealism debate within a larger context of > Quality. The MOQ says that ultimately the idealists are right - no > 'matter' exists before we think about it. *But* adds the MOQ - it is > sometimes a *good* idea that matter exists before we think about it so it's > *good* to operate under that assumption sometimes instead as well.. > > " I think it is best to understand both systems, and shift from one to > another as it becomes valuable to do so." - RMP > Dan: Well, yes, and when have I ever said anything different? Or Robert Pirsig, for that matter? It appears to me you still failing to grasp the significance of what he is saying. You are mouthing the words but picking and choosing among them. > > > Yet: what are you doing? Fighting it. Telling me that that cannot > possibly > > be so. Going on and on about how something so 'simple' is completely > wrong: > > that you know this for a fact, and anything I say is going to fall upon > > deaf ears. > > Hardly deaf ears Dan - I'm hearing you loud and clear. I agree with you - > all ideas you or I have ever heard or ever will hear are human specific and > are a result of the human intellect. But are you hearing me? Traditional > idealism leaves Quality out in the cold.. Dan: Oh! I thought we were talking about the MOQ here! Wait a minute... we are talking about the MOQ here, right? > What about the quality of the idea that matter or society exists before > we think about it? Dan: But you said what is not experienced doesn't exist. And you accuse me of not hearing you? Really? So. Now you are saying what is not experienced does exist? Or that it is a good idea to think so? If what we do not experience doesn't exist, why would it be a good idea to think so? Do you see how such contradictory statements lead me to believe my time here is being wasted? > Ideas don't exist in a void on their own.. They are encapsulated within a > larger concept called static quality of which intellectual patterns of > quality are but one part.. > > "The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist because the connecting links > between these two levels of value patterns have been disregarded. Two terms > are missing: biology and society. Mental patterns do not originate out of > inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of > biology which originates out of inorganic nature. And, as anthropologists > know so well, what a mind thinks is as dominated by social patterns as > social patterns are dominated by biological patterns and as biological > patterns are dominated by inorganic patterns. There is no direct scientific > connection between mind and matter. As the atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, > said, 'We are suspended in language.' Our intellectual description of > nature is always culturally derived. > The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of freeing > itself from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to > invent a myth of independence from the social level for its own benefit. > Science and reason, this myth goes, come only from the objective world, > never from the social world. The world of objects imposes itself upon the > mind with no social mediation whatsoever. It is easy to see the historic > reasons for this myth of independence. Science might never have survived > without it. But a close examination shows it isn't so." - Lila > > > It is your loss that you refuse to even consider such a possibility, not > > mine. > > I suppose it's at this point we start to wonder about whether we fear that > in others that which we fear most in ourselves.. > Dan: ????? > > > > > Anyway, the rest of the discussion pales in comparison to this > disagreement > > and so I am deleting it from this post. If you have some burning > questions, > > feel free to address them. > > > > Thank you, > > > > Dan > > Okay - Even though I would consider my last post amongst my best - I hope > that we can continue this discussion. The quality improvement continues… > > A wholehearted thank-you Dan, > > Thank you, Dan http://www.danglover.com 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
