Hi Dan, My most patient friend, :)
On 5/20/14, Dan Glover <[email protected]> wrote: > John, > > On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 1:49 PM, John Carl <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hi Dan, >> >> It's been a busy weekend, getting the place cleaned up for guests for >> Sarah's wedding. > > Dan: > A wedding! That's wonderful! I love weddings, as long as it isn't > mine. :-) Congratulations! > I hate weddings. I like marriages, but the traditional ceremonies performed to celebrate them are stupid, imho. Maybe its just because of the standard saying "it's the bride's day" that the whole thing appalls me but it seems to be what girls like and if girls didn't like it, there'd be no more babies. So I guess we gotta put up with it, but for most, the whole thing is trite and overdone, with a sad lack of creative symbolism. Unless it's a, as my deceased mother-in-law used to call them, a "you-ness, me-ness, us-ness, we-ness" wedding. Which are out of fashion, these days, and to tell the truth, they didn't do much for me neither. I'm a picky old codger, is what I am. But I do think this wedding is going to be better, than most. I should describe it more, in a different post. >> Jc: writing without intellect is certainly doable. I don't think it >> would >> be valuable but anti-intellectualism is definitely a movement with a >> strong >> following but I despise it all and would rather not discuss it. > > Dan: > Well, I've read some people who say Kerouac wrote his On The Road in a > sort of fever pitch stream of conscious style but I found out later > that he'd been working on the manuscript for some time before he > actually wrote it, intellectualizing it, so to speak. I always thought of Kerouac as intellectual. He had a good intellectual foundation, unlike the hippies that followed. Neal Cassidy never went to any school except reform, and quoted Proust and Superman equally. No, the kind of literature I was referring to was more esoteric than that. I can't remember the author's but I read about them in Ellul, it was a French movement, I think, more than over here but anti-intellectualism and post-intellectualism and reactionary to intellectualism has had all kinds of outlets, and all kinds of expression, in the arts and literature and most especially after the 60's. The Police sang the refrain of that song - doodoo-doo-doo,doodoo-dah, that's all I want to say to Yah, and I believe they were picking up on this and describing it. > > I have read some manuscripts written seemingly without intellect. They > are garbage. What is the sense of writing something that no one else > understands? Even books like Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are > intellectual excises even if they boggle the mind. Jc: I agree completely, Dan. Creating understanding is an art and making it simple is not making it bad. In fact, the reverse. > >>John: >> As for me writing anything, artfully or otherwise... I don't know. I >> can't >> give it much thought right now. > > Dan: > You gotta make the time. Don't think about it. Don't plan on doing it > later. Just make the time and do it. > Jc: Easy to say, mr. avoids-his-own-weddings. But I've got a nice camper again. Very snug, very tight and it gets wi-fi. I may have my own writing cabin, and that's gotta help. > > Dan: > No, I do not think the MOQ obviates the individual. Experience is as > individual as you get. Jc: Ok, I agree. But I'm somewhat flumoxed on making a logical argument for the individual, since mainly those who need the argument, believe in a definition of reality, that obviously makes individuality, "unreal". I hope you see the problem. Dan >Let me put it this way: I remember you talking > about a man who built a mirror so that anyone looking into the mirror > could see themselves exactly like everyone else saw them. > > I objected. If we understand what the MOQ is telling us, we are made > up of all four levels of quality. Each of us has evolved a different > history over the course of our lives. When we look at someone--anyone, > even our own self--we use that personal history to make an > intellectual and social (cultural) judgement on what our sense > perceptions are telling us. > Jc: In that case I was referring to, "as other's see us", means simply physical appearance, at a glance. With no other judgments or recognitions involved. Individuals as Images. Now I realize that what we see in an image is NOT an individual, but an image or imitiation of an individual's appearance > Phaedrus talks about the green flash of the sun in Lila and how he had > never seen it until he read a book that basically told him: hey, look > up into the sky and see it! Same thing here. What we see, what we > hear, taste, smell, and touch are all mediated by our past > experiences, our collection of patterns of value built up over a life > time. > Jc: Yes, that sounds right. Experience is always mediated by the triad of recognition, projection and mediation but the important part is mediation - interpretation. What Pirsig deems "Quality" I believe >> Jc: What I mean is, that craftsmanship is relatively static - it comes >> from lots of repetitious practice and its constrained to defined outlines >> and specifications. Perfect craftsmanship implies an absence of the human >> - a robotic perfection almost, that is different in my experience, than >> art >> which is freed from all that external restraint, and comes from a vision >> within. > > Dan: > I always enjoyed watching Little House on the Prairie. I know, it's > hokey. And since I haven't had a tv for like a hundred years it's one > of those shows I remember watching in the prehistoric days when I did > watch it. Jc: I didn't see much of the show. I read the books to my girls, and I always thought the show fell far short, as Holy-Wood usually does as it tries to reach the LCD, But the story in itself, is a good one. > > Anyway, Charles is a handy guy. He starts making these beautifully > handcrafted tables and everyone likes them so much he sets up shop in > town and begins to manufacture them. Since he puts so much time and > caring into each table, he has to ask a premium price for them. Jc: In real life, Pa was vegan. Which wasn't so easy in those pioneer days. At night he mostly subsisted on graham crackers and self-piety, no doubt. Dan: > > One day a well-dressed fellow walks into the shop and purchases a > table. Not long afterwards, Charles customers start balking at the > price he's asking and suddenly he cannot sell his tables. Walking by a > store, he sees a table similar to his for sale at a fraction of the > price he's asking. > > The man who bought his table copied it and by building them > assembly-line style the price dropped dramatically. Is it the same > table? No! It's cheap knock off. But no one cares. In a hundred years, > which table will still be around? Charles table? Or the cheap knock > off? > Jc: Truth? Both. An exact copy is as good as an original, in physical terms. A man can spend a lifetime perfecting a perfect design that can be copied by a chinese laborer in 5 seconds and welcome to the modern age. When you copy exactly an object, you get an identical object. R&D be damned. Welcome to the New World. >>John: >> And you can't say my reality, isn't the real reality because that would >> break the rules of pragmatism AND the MoQ. > > Dan: > We all have our own realities. That's why we don't always agree on quality. > Jc: Because what is good for me, is not necessarily good for you. Yes. This doesn't mean that Good is relative, but that it's expression is. DQ is absolute. SQ relative. Whaddya think? Altho to be sure, Royce defines Absolute, as the past. Whatever has been done, has been done forever and permanently and thus SQ = the past and thus SQ = the absolute. So I need to work on it, I know. But isn't that what we're all here for? >> Jc: Ok, fine. But DQ, I think of in the aspect of "the dynamic". Change >> fore the better, is a goal - an object-of-desire. > > Dan: > Well, if I understand change for the better, we cannot always say what > it is before hand, only after the fact. So in essence there is no > goal. Jc: We can say there is no specific goal, but there is an urge for betterness. We don't know what exactly in which that betterness will inhere, but we want it all the same. > > Dan: > I tend to think of art as caring. Take my writing, for example. I know > most folk think I'm weird and they're right. I am. They would rather > watch their television shows and have a good time talking about them > to all the other people who watch them while I'm whiling away my time > writing. > > Every once in a while I'll get a few dollars ahead and buy some copies > of my books and hand them out to people I know... folk I work with, > mostly. Sometimes they actually read them... not often, but that > doesn't matter. Sometimes. Perhaps my words might influence them in > some small way. Maybe they might see the world just for a few seconds > in the way I see it. That to me is art. Jc: I think there is a two-fold process, that goes back and forth. There is a social conflict of some kind, that we internalize and deal with artistically/intellectually and we express that to our society in the hopes of resolving the conflict. That's why I think society and intellect are not in conflict, but in intimate relationship. Make love, not war. >> Jc: No. I am saying that all those conflicts you mention are social in >> origin and aspect. Nobody argues over the relevance of Kant, there. But >> they do fight for wealth and celebrity and that their group, which favors >> Ecology, beats the industrial social pattern which values ROI. I have a >> heard time of even imagining the concept of "competition" between the >> levels. Competition is a human term that doesn't work well in nature. >> Lions don't compete with gazelles and gazelles aren't in competition when >> they're running from a lion. They are just running. > > Dan: > I don't know... if I'm a gazelle and a hungry lion is chasing me, I'm > running for a reason. I may not be running from the lion but I'm > running fast enough that I'm not the gazelle at the rear of the pack. > That is competition. That is how evolution works. You are simply running. That's sort of "being the present" doncha think? You're running without thought, instinctually, and as hard as you can. Period. > >>John: >> Second, society promotes and supports intellectual patterns, all the time. >> In the form of universities and art museums and grants and love. Pirsig >> had a hard time early on, with society but later on, he found fame and >> fortune etc. So is it right to say that the nature of relationship >> between >> social pattern and intellectual, competitive or conflicted? I disagree >> with the MoQ, as understood by many. Fortunately I don't believe in a MoQ >> of fixed or static nature. But the open-ness to Value, leaves room for >> growth and improvement. > > Dan: > Of course there is room for improvement. I am not arguing otherwise. > However, society does not support intellectual patterns that seek to > free us of restrictive social patterns. Quite the reverse. Jc: Ok, there is a social immune system that fights "strangeness" And like a biological allergy, can fight against things that it shouldn't. I agree. New Ideas have to be aware of those patterns, and overcome them to a large extent, in order to "be". In order to be born into a social matrix which accepts them and grows into ongoing life. Dan: Look at the > civil rights movement and how long and hard a fight it was and indeed > is, as it is still ongoing. Look at the gay movement now, the fight > for equal rights in marriage. The entrenched social patterns fight any > perceived threat to their dominance. > Jc: Sure, tribe fights against tribe, and nation against nation. All these conflicts are social. Conflict is inherently social because it presupposes an "us" vs. a "them" or a "me" vs. a "you." the basic duallity of conflict is therefore a plurality of interest that considers social ideas such as strength in unity and dominance and control. They are distinct from 4th level concerns which only consider the truth. >> This is why I wonder if SOM isn't inextricably connected to social >> interests - the powers that be which wish to keep the status quo - >> subjects >> and objects as metaphysical fundaments yields absolute control. If so, >> its >> not enough for the MoQ community to attack SOM intellectually. SEE? I do >> have a point here. The MoQ community also has to act socially. >> >> That's my perspective anyway. > > Dan: > I prefer to look at this from what I consider a more expanded point of > view, one offered by the MOQ. The IDEA that gays should have the same > right to marry as heterosexuals is a relatively new idea. It goes > against the grain of established social patterns. This has nothing to > do with subject and object metaphysics... it is about values. Jc: It's about social values. Marriage is a social concern, unless you are talking in pure biological coupling, which doesn't need any social ticket or paper. Intellectually speaking, it's not a big issue, except that if everybody was homosexual there would be no more people, unless you wanted to evolve into some new species where spermata and ovum were socially and scientifically manipulates and controlled in a matrix of utility. That's alway an option, I suppose. For some people. But I think from an MoQ perspective, the biological generation of human's is more than cellular replication - that individuals have the discernment of DQ and thus intrinsic value, means that procreation should be that which brings forth real individuals. Not cogs in a machine. But as far as homosexuality in general, I don't have any innate prejudice. I read and admire the Bible but admit it's instructions to a certain people, long before our current times and even if those prohibitions against homosexuality came back then, that doesn't mean they apply now. So I think all the so called, fundamentalists who go on and on about gay marriage would shut up about it and focus on their own marriages. That's my personal take. Plus I've had quite a few gay friends, over the years and I've never judged them or put them down. I myself was thought as gay, when I went to school because my roomate spread a rumor to the faculty that I'd sarcastically meant. I wasn't offended, I was amused. I had gay friends and I had gay enemies, neither of them around now since the scourges of AIDS wiped them out. I'd always been open-minded and understanding of other's perspectives and leanings, in the hope that they would be the same toward me. > Dan: > Okay. Then we seem to agree that freedom relates to adverse circumstances. > Jc:, Yes, I'd say that absolutely. Just as "adversity" relates to betterness. > Dan: > I would say conflict is the result of the differing sets of value we > hold. Jc: Yes, but pointing out that your "we" is social, then we see that conflict is social and society is conflictual and some society's are intellectually-oriented while other societies are socially-oriented and it could be said that "intellect conflicts with society" when "intellect" and "society" are mere labels for the orientational goals, of the individual societies. But in the end, all conflict is social. If academics didn't have a society, they wouldn't be academics. Sorry, got sidetracked on one of my own ongoing social conflicts. Dan: I keep reading about Russia and how terrible it is that they > want to take back Ukraine. Sanctions have been put in place and now > Russia is threatening to back out of our mutually profitable space > exploration enterprises. Bad news for all of us. > > I don't have any answers but it seems to me that Ukraine is one of the > poorest places on earth. A friend of mine hails from there. From the > stories she tells, it is a place where most people who live there > can't leave soon enough. She had to wait seven years to get visa to > travel here and she swears she would never go back, not even to visit. > Jc: I have a Ukrainian godson but it hardly matters since we've lost touch. I know the country is suffering and half looks to Europe and the west, and half looks to Russia and the east. And I know something weird, but true. That part of the world? They don't like black people. It's mostly a prejudice born of years of ignorance, being shut off behind the iron curtain and all, and not much exposure to people of color, coupled with a certain northern clannishness, that stranger is enemy and we band together against the enemy like we band together against the cold. It didn't help US-Russian relations to have a black president. Not that I'm an Obama hater, understand. Those people make me tired. But looking at it intellectually, it seems to have affected geopolitical reality. Dan: > We in the US seem to be overlaying our values onto a system quite > unlike our own, one that most of us have no way of comprehending, > unless we live on an Indian reservation or in one of the inner cities > of our decaying metropolises like Detroit or even Chicago. > Jc: I agree. Our cultural short-sightedness is an international joke. I believe it comes from our self-focused media. It's a big problem and as cut off from the world as the American nation, that much MORE cut off is Washington DeeCee from the interests of the people. It's a big mess. >> Jc: Ah, well now at least I know where Bo gets it. Didn't you just say >> the 4th level is SOM? > > Dan: > Of course not. I said subject and object metaphysics is a collection > of intellectual patterns. Jc: Yes, This is also Roycean. What we are doing here is philosophy and all philosophy is conceptual with some metaphysically valuistic basis. > > John: >> Or no, you're saying that SOM is a subset of the 4th level. Gotcha. >> Maybe, but it's a lower quality collection of intellectual quality >> patterns. It reifies too much, and the wrong things. > > Dan: > The MOQ expands upon the way we order experience. There is no need to > get rid of subject and object metaphysics as long as we understand > that it is a system of values and not objective and subjective > reality. Jc: Sure, altho I'd rather say subject object "paradigm" than metaphysics because I think of metaphysics as ultimate meanings. You can't get any deeper than metaphysics. A S/O metaphysics, precludes all other meanings for value and being, than subjects and objects. But an S/O paradigm, allows the co-existence of other paradigms and greater ones as well. For intellectual conceptualization is theoretically unbounded. creative conceptualization has no finite limit, which is why its not really definable either, you see. > Dan: > Well, the point I was trying to make is that there are circumstances > in which the intellect responds differently than others. In the > comfort of our homes we have the time to intellectually ponder > metaphysics whereas if we are lost in a forest our intellectual > objectives would be directed toward finding something to eat. Jc: Yes, the way I see it is that since intellect is conceptualization, it differs with the object of it's intent or caring. You can intellectualize bioligical patterns, or inorganic or social or even intellect itself. That's what makes the level so powerful, it is ultimately unbounded. And if unbounded, equivalent to Quality itself. >> Dan: >> I think you might want to look up the term 'metaphysics' and then make >> an effort at another reply here. >> >> >> Jc: no... I don't need to look it up, I've done that before. I should >> restate my former postulate tho: When a new metaphysical outlook is >> adopted, society is changed. > > Dan: > Okay. Then if you don't mind, I will: > metaphysics: > "Metaphysics is a broad area of philosophy marked out by two types of > inquiry. The first aims to be the most general investigation possible > into the nature of reality: are there principles applying to > everything that is real, to all that is? – if we abstract from the > particular nature of existing things that which distinguishes them > from each other, what can we know about them merely in virtue of the > fact that they exist? The second type of inquiry seeks to uncover what > is ultimately real, frequently offering answers in sharp contrast to > our everyday experience of the world. Understood in terms of these two > questions, metaphysics is very closely related to ontology, which is > usually taken to involve both ‘what is existence (being)?’ and ‘what > (fundamentally distinct) types of thing exist?’ " > http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/N095 > > Dan comments: > I see nothing here about society or how metaphysics can change it. > Rather, it appears (to me) as an intellectual pursuit aimed at > ordering reality. Jc: first of all, the society is implicit. It ordered the conceptualizations of language which formed the structure of the questions. It formed the intellect which out of the social/biological matrix, arose. It's already got a pre-patterned agenda, in order to continue and thus "be" that shouldn't be forgotten or abstracted from the understanding of what "intellect" is. I think the deepest understanding that Pirsig's 4 levels bring, is that they are. Together, in all we do., Sure the build upon a basic core, but they don't leave or forsake what they build upon, any more than a building leaves its foundation. The foundation is implicity in the structure and society is implicit in intellect. > > >> >> >>> >>>>> 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: >> How is asking what generates experience a good question when the MOQ >> starts with experience? >> >> Jc: Because asking what generates the MOQ, is also a good question. > > Dan: > What? You mean who, right? The author's name on my copy of Lila is > Robert Pirsig. How about yours? :-) > Jc: No, close, but not quite. The interesting question is what generates Robert Pirsig to generate the MoQ. And that's obviously the right question because its the same question the Author asks himself; all through his work. >> >> Dan: >> >> That would imply something that comes before >> experience. Anyway, I get the distinct impression that we are not >> talking about the MOQ here. Are we? >> >> >> Jc: We are certainly talking about it in different terms, but isn't that >> to be expected? > > Dan: > I would hope we can reach some common ground. > Jc: Yes, that is the goal. To float off in space, but land on common ground. I don't believe we achieve unity by focusing upon the literal words of Pirsig's MoQ, but we achieve unity by focusing upon the generator of Pirsig's MoQ. Whew!. How's that for dramatic and grandiose? But there I stand, I can do no other. >> Dan: >> Okay. What should it be then? >> >>John: >> Dynamic, as well. Growing, evolving, living. > > Dan: > Ah, but it is! I do not disagree. Each time we involve ourselves in > the MOQ we are working at growing it. > > Thanks, > > Dan > Then you and I see it the same, and are at least MoQ brothers. Thank YOU, Dan. 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
