John, On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 2:52 PM, John Carl <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey Dan, > > > > > On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 2:49 AM, Dan Glover <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> D: >> From what I gathered, he was talking about quality. He explained that >> when he sings it sounds completely different than when he watches the >> video and hears himself. That seems right. We have to understand that >> the self image is always going to be different than the image people >> see of us. >> >> > I heard a fascinating TED talk on this the other day. Some guy explained > that he'd always been a social leper in school and then one day he saw a > picture of himself and thought, "l look like a dork". He looked in the > mirror, he looked fine. Looked at his picture, he looked ugly. So he > figured out that the mirror image was showing his hair, parted on the left > side, because a mirror reverses your true image. So he parted his hair so > it looked dorky in the mirror, on the right side but hopefully looked good > to other people. And it worked! Some neuro-linguisticist came on and > talked about how we communicate mostly with the left side of our face. Our > smile is bigger on that side and everything so covering it up signifies a > closed-off personality and opened up is an invitation to commune. > Fascinating, eh?
D: Yes it is. I part my hair in the middle so I guess that's why I look dorky from either side of the mirror and in photographs too. Ha! Finally! That explains it! Let me sort this out a bit... if we communicate with the left side of our face while standing in front of someone, they are using their right eye to evaluate what they're seeing. Since the sense of sight is cross-wired to the brain, we use the left side to make sense of what the right eye is seeing... the rational side. As I said, I've been doing a bit of research on the Apache for a new book I'm working on, or rather a revision of an old book. I found it interesting that when white settlers began arriving in the southwest the Indians noticed how white babies cried incessantly and how the white mothers were forever talking to them. On the other hand Apache babies were docile, rarely crying, and easily adopting to new situations. Apache mothers rarely talked to their babies but instead used their eyes to hold the baby's gaze. When the babies grew older the white children were sent to a school where they sat all day absorbing knowledge from a teacher who used the spoken word to convey lessons. The Apache children learned about the world by being a part of it, by participating in the daily doings of the tribe. The spoken word is symptomatic of the rational side of the brain while direct experience is more intuitive. Does that sound right? >J: > Oh, and in the end, the guy invents a mirror cut in half and set at exact > 90 deg. angle and when you look in it, you see exactly how you appear to > other people. D: I doubt it. Not unless you have lived the same life as those other people. What we see are not objective objects existing independently of us. We are forming perceptions of patterns that contain the values of not only the input from our senses but our learned experiences of a lifetime. > > Dan: > > >> There is no 'objective' self. What we see and hear is a conglomeration >> of our personal history coming to bear upon the moment. Even in >> watching a video we all see and hear something different. >> >> > J: I would say we are being-in-4-levels and the self is a 3rd level > pattern. We derive a sense of self from our society - starting with Mom. D: Not according to the MOQ... and I take it that is what we're discussing... right? > > > Dan: > > >> Still, I imagine he's a lot like me. In order to gauge my writing I >> often compare my stuff to other writers. I've been doing this long >> enough that I blow most amateurs out of the water. And I don't mean >> that in an egotistical way. It's just that after writing a few million >> words my skills have evolved beyond what they once were. On the other >> hand, when I read some of the greats I can see where my skills are >> lacking. >> >> > J: I don't really think of myself as an interesting writer, but I have had > a lot of interesting experience and so that helps. Kerouac wasn't that > much of a great writer as he was a great live-er, met a lot of interesting > people and then his live-er gave out. I don't have any ambition to be a > great writer but I have a need to express what is inside of me. Not in > some trivial, social-media way, but ideas and concepts and meaning. But > nothing is interesting unless it's a good story. Some people are born into > the story and some people the story is born in them. It probably evens out > in the end. D: It is for others to decide if my writings are interesting. If they find them so, then my bank account grows healthier at the end of every month. Kerouac drank too much and died way too young. Had he lived, he might have learned to become a great writer. Me, I always figure if I am going to take the time to do something, I am going to do it well. Otherwise, why bother? > > Dan: > > >> In the same fashion, when my friend says he sucks I suspect he's good >> enough that when he sees and listens to amateurs like himself they >> cannot compete with his style but when he compares his music with >> professional singer-songwriters, he becomes aware of his limitations. >> >> J: I feel bad about that. We live in an age of the magnified talent - > the system seeks far and wide for the best of the best and then tweaks > their image to perfection. Who can compete with that? Not ordinary > people. You have to be driven and who wants to be driven? I'd rather do > the driving, thank you. D: Perhaps you think of yourself as an individual separate and apart from all you know while I think of my self as a collection of patterns that exist in concert with the universe. > >> John: Most great schools of art were exactly that - schools. >> Groups of individuals. > > D: >> Hmmm. I tend to disagree. A school may appear to be a group of >> individuals but the value that holds that school together is rooted in >> culture. Remember how Robert Pirsig describes the university in ZMM? >> >> > > J: Ok, here's a good topic . I agree that a school is a product of > culture, but you can't have a culture, without individuals. Any more than > you can have any social pattern without biological being and support. D: I would word this differently. In terms of the MOQ, social patterns arise from biological patterns just as biological patterns arise from inorganic patterns. The term 'individual' comes from the Latin form of the Greek 'atom,' that which cannot be cut any further. If you understand the lesson from ZMM then you must know that to cut the individual off from its environment will kill it just as effectively as cutting off one's head. The individual in that sense becomes the universe. This is vitally important to understand not only in terms of the MOQ but in the process of life itself. J: > An > ongoing matter of discussion, the way the levels interact. Platt has hung > his hat on the idea that the 4th level is the Individual level and I think > the point could be made that pure intellect is pure individualism. D: I never agreed with Platt on this or on much else for that matter. >J: > But the best label i can imagine is, "the high country of the mind" > Usually it's a lonely climb to get there, but not necessarily. . It's > better to have a team, if you can find one. More chance of surviving and > avoiding the loony-bin. D: By team I take you mean a group of individuals? > > > > > >> > >> > >> >>[John] >> >> > When I think of the delimiter between the organic and the inorganic, I >> >> > think of choice. An amoeba makes rudimentary reactions that express >> >> > avoidance of sulphuric acid but inorganic crystals have no choice. >> This >> >> is >> >> > just a subjective observation but by seeing things from an MoQ >> >> perspective, >> >> > it seems to me that all the levels can be seen as escalating levels of >> >> > available choice. Another way of saying that is escalating levels of >> >> > self-ness as any organic "thing" is a self-contained organism 0 a >> whole >> >> > that is non-existent as a simple addition of parts. The whole is >> only a >> >> > whole when it's constituent parts are organized into a certain >> structure >> >> > that makes a whole, and replicates. Life replicates while inorganic >> >> matter >> >> > just degrades to lower levels of being, energy wise. Organic patters >> >> seem >> >> > to defy the rules of entropy in some ways. >> >> >> >> Dan: >> >> I've been doing a bit of research of my own for one of my new projects >> >> that has to do with cowboys and Indians but that is beside the point. >> >> The Apache believe they and the land were created together. >> > >> > >> > John: Much like the Christians. But people don't like to be reminded of >> > their muddy genesis. >> >> D: >> I was under the impression that the Christians are relative newcomers >> to all this. Too, if I remember my bible, god created the heavens and >> the earth well before he saw the need for human beings, right? >> > > J: and all the animals, exactly. He made man out of the dust but then he > didn't make woman til man noticed he was alone, and she was the crowning > cherry on top, the last thing created. The mythos in the bible is a lot > more interesting than the dogmatic interpretations of the religions that > tout it. For instance, it's said that God created woman out of a rib, but > the actual word used in the original is womb. Thus the story goes that at > first, man is self-creative and alone, but he's unsatisfied with this state > of affairs so God splits him and takes out the self-creative part and > personifies a longing for otherness that is an analogy of God Himself. > Without longing for the other, duality is impossible. D: I think most of the stories in the bible are tales from more ancient times when the prevailing culture was one more related to animism rather than associated with religion. Religion grew out of those old myths. > > (snip for brevity) > > >> John: Well here I was using the term self in a very broad way. A better >> word might be "identity" Life is tied up with an identity, as formed in >> time. >> But I think the broad understanding of MD ought to be corrected on to the >> meaning and importance of the self. Just because something isn't >> fundamental, doesn't mean it's non-existent. > > D: >> The MOQ says there is no self independent of the patterns. That isn't >> the same as saying the self is non-existent. >> >> > > J: I agree completely. I would say that there is a special aspect of > self-ness that every level uses as the basis of its patterns. Isn't an > evolution itself, an evolving pattern of self-hood? I think it's very > telling that Pirsig says that DQ enters human affairs through an > individual, not a committee. D: Yes but we must remember the individual is made up of all four levels of patterns of value. >J > However individuals are products of and relative to, a community. So it's > definitely a two-way street, society and intellect. It's a code of art. D: When we subsume self and object into a more expansive Metaphysics of Quality it becomes clearer that there are no individuals as such. Rather, we are all intimately connected to our environment whether we recognize it or not. The patterns that form a community are not the same as the patterns that rule the jungle yet they share an evolutionary history. > > Thanks as always, Dan, You're welcome, John. Thank you too. 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
