Dan, Dan:
> I think one of the lessons of ZMM is that anything can be seen as > art... the title of the book is indicative of that. Most people don't > think of grease monkeys as artists, but they can be. So no, it isn't > wrong to associate the romantic with art but I would say it is short > sighted. A classical personality like Phaedrus can also be an artist. > > Jc: The object of artistic endeavor, can be anything from flower -arranging to metaphysics, of course. But the endeavor of artistry is different than other endeavors, including approaching things intellectually. But to make the useful distinction clearer, intellect can be done artfully but art can't really be done intellectually, unless you want to bend the definition of intellectually to fit your own private space - but isn''t doing so (estoricism) counter-productive? > > > > > > > >> >John: > >> > But art, somehow, does. > >> > > >> > All logic came from a society that was following quality - what is > >> > good. Rhetoric is an art. Logic is a tool. > >> > >> Dan: > >> Anything can be seen as art as long as it is well done. I think that's > >> one of the lessons from ZMM... even a welder can be seen as an artist. > >> > >> > > Jc: I've encountered this issue before - is craftsmanship the same as > > artistry? > > Dan: > Craftsmanship can be an artistic endeavor. > Jc: On a relative scale, art is dynamic and craftsmanship is static. If you approach your craft, too dynamically, you'll end up with something that doesn't function. Craftsmanship can be done artfully, like intellect, but it's not the same thing. > > John: > > Is following a blueprint the same as creating a blueprint? > > Dan: > Both can be artistic endeavors. > > > John: > > Is a > > chinese craftsman copying the Mona Lisa, brush stroke for brush stroke, > > himself as artistic as Leonardo DaVinci? I don't think so. > > Dan: > If I copy Hemingway word for word, am I the artist that Hemingway was? > Of course not. > > Jc: what we call craftsmanship, is not somebody reading a blueprint or following written instructions - but they are following a pre-determined pattern for a long time so that its internalized. Their craft is defined by their perfect lines with everything fitting so its exactly like the things made before it and the things made after it. Machines are capable of craft, but only humans do real art. > > John: > > I think Art is > > more tied to DQ and craftsmanship to SQ. > > Dan: > I think anything done with great peace of mind and caring is artistry. > > Jc: Sure, I've heard you can take a crap, artfully. But here I'm going to attack that definition of "art". Even tho it's widely in use. I'm not talking about subjective experiences of artful endeavor the ubiquitous self-declared genius of the 20th century. I'm not talking about objective artistry as in something that only resides in certain things like paintings or sculptures. I'm talking about art as in meaningful and revolutionary. I'm talking about art as the closest we can get to DQ. Zen isn't so much about practice, as breaking practice and art is thinking outside the box. Craftsmanship is making a perfect box. > > > >> > >> Jc: you can say just as much "molecules don't make people" but the > >> truth is, they do. > > > > Dan: > >> But that is not what the MOQ says... biological patterns make use of > >> inorganic molecules in the same way that social patterns make use of > >> biological patterns. Human beings are composed of all four value > >> levels but that doesn't mean social patterns are made up of biological > >> patterns any more than biological patterns are made up of molecules. > >> Otherwise, we'd have talking rocks. > >> > >> > > Jc: "make use of" is fine with me. As long as it's understood that, > > without the lower level "to be made use of", the upper would not be. > > Dan: > Sure, that goes without saying. > Jc: Then why does MD have a hard time saying that the 4th should be helping the 3rd, rather than "competing with it"? You don't compete with your foundational support, you build it. > Jc: I can agree that the MoQ does not but the community of interpretation > based upon the MoQ, often does, imho. It is seen in derogating "merely > social" patterns. Dan: > I guess that depends upon the context. > > > > > > > > > > >> > >> John: > >> > A bunch of biological beings do not alone > >> > make a society. But you can't have a society without a collection of > >> > biological beings. > >> > >> Dan: > >> But you can have social patterns without a collection of biological > beings. > >> > >> > > Jc: No. You can't. There has never, ever been in experience, a society > > without people. > > Dan: > Here is the confusion. A society made up of people is not social > patterns of value. Social patterns are non-physical. You cannot see > them. You cannot put them under a microscope and examine them. As long > as you see social patterns as a collection of people, there will be > confusion. > > Jc: I don't see the social patterns in the individual people. I do see them as working on individual people. Controlling, but not "competing". I'm amazed that anybody could conceptualize social patterns without any people. "Man is the measure of all things" means you can't them out of the picture in your abstractions. Biology incorporates inorganic things in its being. So too does society incorporate biological beings into a transcendant whole - a jump in level. As long as you see social patterns as independent of people, there will be confusion. > >John: > > If you counter with such abstract social patterns as "laws", I have to > say > > that laws were created by people, for people. They don't create > themselves! > > Dan: > No one is arguing that. When you say 'law' what do you point to? Take > the law of gravity, for example... does it exist physically? Can we > see it? Can we put it under a microscope and examine it? > > Jc: You are countering my arguments as if I was an objective materialist and plainly I'm an idealist. That's been on my banner forever. So don't expect me to define what is a real existent, by what can be seen in a microscope. What is being missed, by you and all, is the way the levels are built upon and contain the lower. Not because they are "things" (which obviously can't "occupy" the same space) but patterns. And patterns can overlay, as in musical rhythms. This is a big problem in modern thinking, and part of the Greek mistake - philosophy is rational - it came from spatial geometric ratio, but life is temporal, with a static past and a dynamic future, and experience is process. But that's a whole other rant. When I say "law" I point to a commonly understood, and usually written down, code of conduct for people, or a description of scientific ideas. > > > > > > > >> John: > >> > The lower levels can't compete with the higher - > >> > they comprise the higher, in a fashion of laddered nestings of > >> > meaning. You can't have the upper rungs, without the lower. > >> > >> Dan: > >> In the MOQ, the levels are often in opposition to one another. > > > > > > > > Jc: Well that's a shame because in real life, the levels support and > > harmonize with one another. You can't have intellectual patterns, > without > > social language, for instance. And intellectual ideas are always > > criticisms of old intellectual ideas. New social patterns are created > out > > of new ideas. You seem to be conflating the opposition the old has > against > > the new to inter-level conflict. That's more a DQ vs SQ thing rather > than > > a social vs intellect thing. > > Dan: > I don't think I am conflating anything. It is the MOQ that states that > the levels are often in opposition. I am pretty sure I already offered > a quote to back up that assertion so I take it you believe it is the > MOQ that conflates the old against the new. > > Jc: yes, I reckon I do. I see a specific problem with the idea and I don't often argue with the author, but I guess I am now. I agree his words made sense at the time they were written, in the context of a story. But Conflict, is not a story you want to continue into the future, ad infinitum. The story of evolution does not point to one species, standing on a dead earth with everything else killed because competition is the goal of evolution. These ideas are all outmoded. > > > > Dan: > > > > > >> Social > >> patterns seek to control biological patterns in the same way that > >> biological patterns seek to control inorganic patterns. It isn't that > >> they seek to destroy one another, however. > >> > >> > > Jc: I agree. I don't see control as the same as competition. When my > > kids were babies, I controlled what they ate and where they lived but > there > > was no competition involved. > > Dan: > I think that is short sighted. Children need to be under control > because they don't yet understand the dangers in the world. As > parents, we compete with biological urges of our children that we know > are not in their best interest. It happens all the time. > > Jc: I just can't buy they conflation of compete and control. It sounds like you'd have to use Freud to make your point, or some subtle psychological thing but I never competed with my kids biological urges. I directed them appropriately but all biological urges are rooted in real needs. They aren't to be repressed, or fought, or competed with. They are to be directed and guided as socially useful. That's been my human experience and if you've had a different, then I'm sorry. >> Dan: >> To be in opposition to something does not imply war. Instead, look at >> the higher levels as seeking to free the lower ones. >> >> > Jc: I definitely see it as "freeing" but I can't see freeing as > opposition. Dan: > We all have a comfort level where we tend to settle into. Unless > something which opposes that comfort comes along and shakes us out of > our complacency, we stagnate. > > Jc: Anthropomorphising a particular psychological pattern onto all the levels and eternal conflict with society does not seem an appropriate move, imho. Let's just there is a tendency for all levels, to value staticity. I agree. Much of that time, that's fine. But when a certain point is reached, where life demands a change, those who attach TOO much value to staticity, can't change without some harsh external force. But not everybody is like that. Buddhists, for instance, learn to shun attachment. :) > Jc: I guess my particular point is that my life is as I want. If there is > some oppressor, making it so, who cares? If they or it are forcing me to > be content then pragmatically speaking, so what? As you said yourself, > the upper levels are freeing the lower. Freeing is not opposition and its > a good kind of control. Dan: > We don't seek to gain freedom from something we like. We seek to gain > freedom from suffering. Freedom is always in opposition to something > holding us back, otherwise, there is no need to be free. > > Jc: Yup. I think that was my point? > Jc: I admit there are bad forms of control. My point was that all control > is not bad. If the Farmer is of a kindly nature and treats his animals > well, it's probably a fair trade. All animals eventually die and becomes > food for other animals. This can be accepted gracefully and life can be > good. Dan: > Sure. I can get up, go to work every day, come home, sit down in front > of the television until I get sleepy, go to bed, and get up and do it > all over again the next day until I am too old and worn out to go on, > at which point the beneficent corporation I worked for puts me out to > pasture and I spend my twilight years gumming my food and shuffling > back and forth to the pharmacy. > > I can accept that gracefully. Lots of folk do. > > Jc: Yup. Dan: Or, I can say the hell with the corporation and spend my days and my > nights creating something completely new and unlooked for. It > certainly isn't as easy as working for the corporation where I know > all my needs will be taken care of. I'll never get to retire because > my art will only be complete the day I die. I'll spend my twilight > years still hammering away at the keyboard. > > Jc: Amen. Preach it brother. >> Jc: Sure. I realize I'm arguing with the author's words. But is > >> that a valid effort? > > > > Dan: > >> I think it is a valid effort if you are offering something better. > >> > >> > > Jc: I definitely think it's better for intellect to struggle with > > societies problems than to ignore it all as "beneath 4th level concerns" > > Dan: > I tend to leave the problems of society to others to solve. I have > enough work trying to fill the holes in the plots of my stories. > Jc: Well it's my contention, that the best efforts are when we solve or try to solve societies problems, in our stories and art. In an intuitive and unconscious way, rather than a heavy-handed and preachy way. Here of course, we're allowed to get heavy-handed and preachy. > > >John: > > Even the dictum to solve the problem in one's own mind and heart first, > is > > not a necessary limit but a necessary beginning. Let's take those > > beginning steps, for sure. But don't stop there or the MoQ is doomed. > > Staticity = death. > > Dan: > Again, I am not arguing about that. If a person can offer something > better, great. I am reminded of the author Dave Buchanan brought up a > little while ago... Mr. Edwards was his non de plume, I believe... or > maybe it was Hitchcock? I don't remember. I just remember he had > something to do with Little House on the Prairie. Anyway, the book he > offered was nonsensical. It was plain to see the guy had no > understanding of what Robert Pirsig was saying. > > Jc: I've come to believe that Robert Pirsig has greatly penetrated the academic and commercial world. Even tho he is very little understood. And the problems of SOM, are much bigger than merely intellectual. SOM is the quintessential social- operating system, par excellence, at least in a militaristic, conflict-paradigm. Which is a very good reason, to leave that paradigm behind. Dan: > Art isn't for sissies. Art requires not only a thorough knowledge of > the subject, but a sort of disengagement that allows for creativity to > leak through. Sort of like the beer can shim in ZMM. A person can go > to the shop, purchase some precisely engineered shim stock, artfully > cut a section to fit inside the handlebar grips, or they can hack up a > beer can and artfully make a shim out of it. > > Jc: i do that all the time, but usually to make a battery post shim, rather than motorcycle handlebars. I don't own a motorcycle anymore but we do have a lot of old cars around, mine, my wife's and my daughters, and we're too cheap to get new terminals. I always think of ZAMM when I do. Last time, I realized that you gotta pick a section with no paint, or the battery can't give a good connection. duh. > > > > John: > >> > When you're talking about all of > >> > reality, fitting into 4 discrete levels, you can't say they are > >> > completely discrete, because everything is in intimate relation and > >> > while there is conflict and problems and pain, in the world, there is > >> > also support, and upholding, and caring and love. > >> > >> Dan: > >> "Trying to explain social moral patterns in terms of inorganic > >> chemistry patterns is like trying to explain the plot of a > >> word-processor novel in terms of the computer's electronics. You can't > >> do it. You can see how the circuits make the novel possible, but they > >> do not provide a plot for the novel. > > > > > > > > Jc: There ya go. Plain as day. What would a novel be, without a plot? > > Dan: > So you accept that the four levels are discrete? > > Jc: They are different patterms, but they overlay one another and harmonize and commmunicate in mysterious ways, all the way from the bottom to the top, and vice versa. Absolutely discreet? No way. > > > > Dan quoting Lila: > > > > The novel is its own set of > >> patterns. Similarly the biological patterns of life and the molecular > >> patterns of organic chemistry have a "machine language" interface > >> called DNA but that does not mean that the carbon or hydrogen or > >> oxygen atoms possess or guide life. A primary occupation of every > >> level of evolution seems to be offering freedom to lower levels of > >> evolution. But as the higher level gets more sophisticated it goes off > >> on purposes of its own." [Lila] > >> > >> Dan comments: > >> Like the plot of a novel, caring cannot be found in the physical > >> universe. It resides in its own set of patterns. > >> > >> > > Jc: Quality is indefinable, but everybody KNOWS what it is. That is, it > > can be experienced in the patterns that make up the physical universe. > > Dan: > Ah! And why can it be experienced? Isn't that the reason experience > and Dynamic Quality become synonymous in the MOQ? > > Jc: I don't think of experience as "just the moment". I think of it in Roycean terms of a past, a present and a future, all cognized and harmonized. I think of DQ as anything BUT the past, and thus I do distinctify between DQ and experience. >> Dan: >> Intellectual paradigms of society does not correspond to social patterns. >> >> > Jc: Then they should try harder. The goal of all intellectual analysis is > conformity with the object of its attention. Dan: > That depends. If a person is starving to death, then the goal of > intellectual analysis is to find something to eat, conformity be > damned. > > Jc: If a person is starving, the object of attention is food and thus the goal of intellectual analysis. > > > > > > > >> John: > >> > We critique a society's metaphysics, intellectually. > >> > We oppose it's social expansions, socially. > >> > >> Dan: > >> Again, it gets confusing when you mix metaphors. > > > > > > Jc: Heh. Metaphysics ain't for sissies. And neither is poeisis. But > I'm > > always willing to clarify and re-state. But what I was referring to, > > above, that social patterns require other social patterns to oppose them. > > You can't oppose a social pattern, solely by an idea that nobody grasps. > > Dan: > Nobody grasped the theory of relativity for years after Einstein > published his paper. Yet his ideas were clearly opposing the social > patterns of the day. Einstein worked as a patent clerk for 15 years > after publishing his first paper! So yes, you can oppose social > patterns solely by an idea nobody grasps. > > Jc: What Einstein had in mind, was not "This will show them, I'm going to overthrow society with my intellectual ideas" but acceptance by society. In fact, he did wish to overthrow German society and picked sides with the allies - that is, intellect serves a society, which competes with other societies and the kind of socities that don't heed intellect, are doomed. > > > > > Dan: > > > > > >> Social patterns do > >> not invent metaphysics. A metaphysics is a collection of intellectual > >> patterns that seek to control social patterns. > >> > >> > > > > Jc: Social patterns do not invent metaphysics. Metaphysics invent > social > > patterns. > > Dan: > I think a metaphysics is a collection of intellectual quality > patterns. Social patterns arise out of biological patterns. > > Jc: I thought social patterns were discrete, in your view? When a new metaphysics is grasped and adopted by a group of people, a new society is born. I don't know if that is MoQ correct, but it is obvious to any thinking person. >> Dan: >> The MOQ states that experience and Dynamic Quality are synonymous. >> > > > Jc: Then the MoQ is wrong. Experience is generated by Dynamic Quality, > but that doesn't make them synonomous. Any more than a father is > synonomous with his child or electricity with a dynamo. A certain > correlation exists, sure. But equality? No way. Dan: > Static quality arises from experience. Remember, the MOQ begins with > experience. To say experience is generated by something is to go > against that, and we are no longer talking about the MOQ. > > I could offer myriad quotes to back this up, but I have a feeling it > wouldn't do any good. Would it? > > Jc: No, not really. I recall myself the quote and I agree with your reading. I guess my point is "begins with" is certainly not synonymous with "is synonymous with" and thus Pirsig is making my point. But do you really think asking what generates experience is wrong? It seems a good question to me. > > > > > > Dan: > > > > Since the MOQ starts with experience, that is the highest value. Look > >> at it this way: experience is a river, deep and wild and dangerous. To > >> jump into it is to put the self in danger. So, each of us have a > >> bucket we fill from the river of experience and we call the water > >> inside that bucket our life. We define everything in our bucket and > >> call it static quality. But that defining is itself Dynamic Quality. > >> We are always in touch with it even if we can never fully define the > >> definition. > >> > >> > > > > Jc: No. Look at it this way. Existence is. Any river environment that > > defines the boundaries of this existence, do not themselves make this > > existence because existence is temporal, not spatial. > > Dan: > But that is what we as human beings do... we define boundaries. The > temporal nature of reality has nothing to do with that. > > Jc: Yes! It does. Because the boundaries of the past are not necessarily the boundaries of the future. On a related note, I don't believe the MoQ should be only static. > > > > > > I have to stop now. Taking lu ouy for frozen yoghurt, soon as she > finishes > > mowing the lawn. :) > > Dan: > I'd really love a hot fudge sundae, thank you! > > Dan > It's gonna be almost 100 today. eating ice cream sounds like a good occupation but alas, now its MY turn to mow the lawn and I've frittered away the morning talking to YOU. Time well spent, John 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
