hi gang: Maybe Bodvar will be relieved when he notices that the "global consciousness" notion came from a different Dave. In fact, this is my first post on this month's topic. But perhaps it was a telepathic pre-emptive strike because my first answer to the question of a fifth level has to do with an old book titled "COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS; A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind". But first things first. I have a lot of sympathy with Jonathan's objection, but I don't think it's a show stopper. We have to accept the axioms. Speculation on a fifth level could shed some light as long as we realize it doesn't really exist yet. Our speculations will necessarily take us beyond the MOQ and that could be alot of fun. On the other hand our extrapolations will have the disadvantage of amplifying and compounding any misconceptions we might have. One area where we seem to have a lot of agreement is the position of the fifth level. It would be above the fourth level. The fifth level would have to be the offspring of the intellect, and as Bo points out, it would look a lot like intellectual values at first. I also agree that the artificial intelligence approach won't work in the MOQ. If Pirsig is against the deadly crossfire that has social level values pinned down, he's hardly going to go along with AI, which skips two levels instead of just one. AI is twice as bad as SOM. I'm thinking that Maggie's brainstorming sessions are so productive because they accidentily put social vaules back on the table. Problems are solved in a group rather than by commitees or individuals. I bet if you asked the participants, they'd say they felf more natural and real doing it that way. The old way seems clumsy and forced because it is. But I'm just guessing. It seems to me that the fifth level would almost HAVE TO be created in the future. Why should the evolutionary process suddenly come to an end? A fifth level seems more likely than not. But it is a level of reality that doesn't exist yet and is beyond our imagination in a very real sense. We imagine it like a fish imagines fire, not very well. FREEDOM, COMPLEXITY AND THE MIGRATION TOWARD DYNAMIC QUALITY I thought that each level acted to help preserve and enhance the freedom of the one below, but apparently there's is disagreement on this point. Pirsig points to the idea that "man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains" and says its not true. Its one of those SOM standards he goes after. He says its not true because social organization liberates the organism from mere survival in the wild. Society doesn't chain men, it sets them free from the demands of biological quality. It seems to me that intellectual values are supposed to to the same for society. Maybe I've compounded a mistake, but I'd say that the fifth level would liberate and preserve the intellectual level , in spite of the inevitable conflict that comes from newly born levels. SHE"S A SICK BABY The reason the intellectual level seems so hostile to society is that it was just born and suffers from SOM, which compounds the problems with newly independent levels as they establish themselves. Before a fifth level can ever be hoped for, the fourth level has to straighten out and grow up. We're talking about when an infant will bear its own children, and I'm not even sure if she's gonna live to a child-brearing age, so to speak. DEGENERATE HINT OF THE FUTURE or PRECOCIOUS EVOLUTION Constructing the MOQ was degenerate because it seeks to explain the mystical (DQ) in intellecutual terms. Its degenerate because it brings lowers the mystical down to the top. Down to the top. There's a big hint about the fifth level, eh? Richard Maurice Bucke wrote "Cosmic Consciousness" in 1901. He was superintendent at London's (Canada) Asylum for the Insane. With such a new-age sounding title, I have to add that Bucke and his book were enthusiastically acclaimed by William James. Essentially, Bucke saw that there were widespread accounts of dramatic conversion experiences reported in all times and places, but that they were increasing in frequency. He saw that the mystical experience was getting to be more and more common as time passed. He says these experiences not only represent a radical shift in consciousness for the individual, but that this kind of illumination was advancing mankind's relation to the Infinite. (DQ?) This seems like a reasonable way to imagine it. Look at remarkable people who are considered to be ahead of their time and you'll see what's in store for the rest of us in the future. Maybe the fifith level will emerge slowly and steadily as more and more people experience that radical shift. Maybe it'll come like a giant tidal wave and drown all the unconverted. DMB MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
