Bobby and Group.
I had hoped for a continuation/completion of your "Lila's Reason"
before commenting on it, but the first instalment contained enough
points of interests. It is always interesting to learn about other
people's encounter with Pirsig's work and their analysis of why this
became a lasting "affair".
> I read ZAMM in the mid eightees and was immediately impressed and
> affected by the style and content of the book, which I believe was
> perhaps the first ever attempt to seriously understand the power and
> limitations of reason - an area of great interest for me ( why ? I
> dont know the reason !). I expected much more on this in LILA which I
> read some eight months back - the book was a disappointment in that
> comtext and i knew that P had written a book with an attempt to ignite
> the (dwindling?) "moral force" of western intellect and philosophy
> (assuming that there is anything like "moral force" acknowledged by
> the west).
ZMM is an attempt to understand the power and limitation of
reason. In my opinion (more than LILA) also "...an attempt to ignite
the dwindling moral force.....etc. Anyway it became the beginning
of a philosophy of MORALS in a greater meaning than the previous
"ethics". These had all failed for the simple reason that value -moral
- have notoriously been regarded subjective, which is next to irreal.
> But the western culture puts very high value (and now the
> rest of the world following) on science and technology as the ultimate
> in human evolution and accomplishment,
Right, but in the complete philosophy of morals as presented in
LILA Western value is no dwindling, but an overpowering of one
topmost moral level - Intellect (science and technology) - which to
the level below looks like moral decay. But now I have entered into
the MOQ vocabulary and if Western focus is intellect, it is not the
least interested in being any "level, but insist upon being TRUTH.
> and any philosophy or
> metaphysics that does not contribute to this technological advancement
> is quickly and viciously attacked,analysed for any inconsistencies or
> contradictions (which is all they look for) and thereby pronounced
> dead.
Exactly. Any philosophy that doesn't (in your words) "...contribute
to technology and science ". (In mine) ...Doesn't start with
intellect's premises... is pronounced dead. To see why we have to
realize that not only is "society" a MOQ construct, "Intellect" is as
well.
> And in MOQ , apart from Quality , another UNDEFINEABLE term
> Dynamic Quality has been added. So even if the book is technically
> flawless, it doesnt quite serve the purpose because agreed upon reason
> (logic)cannot deal with undefinable terms
Apart from Quality? Apart from static quality and indefinable yes,
but not beyond experience. But again we are faced with the
incompatibility of "the intellectual level" (seen from the MOQ) and
Intellect as it sees itself - as reason itself which cannot handle
irrational quantities.
> that have nothing to do with
> technological advancement. Besides that, any new idea or proposition
> must be fitted into some "ism" or "ology" according to western
> intellect or it is insignificant trash.
Right you are!
> So i was skeptical about MoQ but after i started posting in this
> forum ( a fool stepping in where angels fear to tread ? i asked
> myself) , i realised that MoQ may have a future after all, because of
> its general purpose design. Western intellect is currently on a high
> horse after its (intellectual?) victory over communism , and still
> celebrating.
I wouldn't say that communism's fall was intellect's greatest
victory, more of an by-effect. First it was its emergence out of myth
(as described in ZMM) later it was the same feat in new guise: Its
suppression of the Medieval Church. That marked the great
watershed.
We think nothing is wrong when we are successful. Its
> only when the conditions become unbearable that we look for answers
> beyond our built in and acquired biases and prejudices. Meanwhile,
> anyone that says otherwise is "unreasonable".
Agree. Intellect has been very successful - an external enemy
unites - but now its built-in weakness shows. And its fault is what
the MOQ has demonstrated: It is merely one reality level, there are
three more.
> So i think that if we examine the process of reason itself, we
> stand a better chance of overcoming the limitations of reason.
That is our task, but the reason that emerges will not be the
pompous TRUTH reason, but a limited Subject-Object logic.
> One facet of reason that became reinforced as a result of posting here
> is :
> One man's cup of tea is another man's cup of poison,
> One culture's reason is another culture's absurdum.
One level's ...etc to be pendantic ;-)
> To be continued...
Good!
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