dmb said:
...The MOQ says that intellectual values are as real as rocks and trees. And
these values are placed at the top of the moral hierarchy precisely because
they are more dynamic, more open to change, than are the other categories of
static values.
Timo replied:
...What do you mean by "more dynamic" and "more open to change"? I would
immediately subscribe to "more moral", "on a higher evolutionary level", but
your statement reads to me also as "more fragile", "less static", which I feel
would weaken the "as real as rocks" assertion. Did I understand you right
there? Can you recall a Pirsig quote to support this?
dmb says:
Yes, it would be right to read it as "less static". The term "fragile" might
have some misleading connotations because dynamic change is like growth or
adaptation whereas shattering is more like degeneration or death. Dynamic
change is a matter of evolving or developing and so it's approximately the
opposite of breaking up or falling apart. But it's true that a scientific truth
may only last for a few years before something better comes along whereas
social level values tend to be much more stable. By the same token, however,
the rate of social evolution is much, much faster than biological evolution and
the inorganic is so very static that we can do pretty well if we assume
physical reality operate on eternal laws. Overall, the higher levels are more
dynamic and that means less stable, more open to further development.
Pirsig said:
"Science supercedes old religious forms, not because what it says is more true
in any absolute sense (whatever that is), but because what it says is more
Dynamic." (Parenthetical comment is Pirsig's, LILA Chapter 17)
Here I think Ken Wilber expresses the meaning of Pirsig's sentence, but with a
little more detail...
"Mythology is true enough in its own world-space; it's just that perspectival
reason is 'more true'; more developed, more diffferentiated-and-integrated, and
more sophisticated in its capactiy to disclose verifiable knowledge. Thus the
higher truths of rationality pass judgement on the lower truths of mythology,
and for the most part mythology simply does not survive those more
sophisticated tests. Moses did not part the Red Sea, and Jesus was not born by
a biological virgin. Those claims, in the light of higher reason, are indeed
bogus. ...And if religion is to survive in a viable form in the modern world,
it must be willing to jettison its bogus claims, just as narrow science must be
willing to jettison its reductionistic imperialism."
"...a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social
values is absolutely superior to one that does not."
"From a static point of view, socialism is more moral than capitalism. It's a
higher form of evolution. It is an intellectually guided society, not just a
society that is guided by mindless traditions."
"It is not that Victorian social economic patterns are more moral than
socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite. They are less
moral as static patterns go."
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