Hello everyone
>From: "Wim Nusselder" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: MD Relations between levels
>Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 10:16:19 +0200
>
>Dear Dan,
>
>I renamed the subject, but this is a reply to your 20/6 11:24 -0500 posting
>in the "True Libertarians Please Stand Up"-thread.
>
>In my contribution of 16/6 21:59 +0200 I suggested that the different
>levels evolve in analogous ways:
>"Biological/Social/Intellectual evolution can be seen as a process by which
>weak Dynamic forces at a subatomic/subcellular/individual level discover
>stratagems for overcoming huge static inorganic/biological/social forces at
>a superatomic/supercellular/collective level."
>
>You wrote 17/6 10:45 -0500:
>"I believe Lila may contradict your analogy though I find it very
>intriguing." and quoted Pirsig 'against me'.
>
>18/6 22:35 +0200 I raised 4 defences:
>1. If you are intrigued by the analogy, that's enough to let it stand for a
>while, without bothering about contradictions with other valuable ideas.
>Let's see what fresh insights come out of your (and mine) intriguedness.
>2. Why bother (too much) about contradictions with Pirsig's writings. They
>are not the supreme authority in interpreting and extending a MoQ. Our own
>Quality experience is.
>3. Pirsig's writings themselves are full of contradictions. they can be
>read as pointing towards a more inclusive level of truth that can't be
>adequately expressed in words. It's the paradoxes (apparent contradictions)
>and metaphors that make us aware of this more inclusive truth.
>4. The contradiction may be solved by distinguishing between moral codes
>under which a level operates (the law of the jungle on the biological
>level, competition for status or "the law" according to Lila p. 183 on the
>social level, competition for veracity on the intellectual level) and the
>way in which levels evolve. The ways in which levels evolve are analogous,
>but don't follow a law. Static patterns of value on different levels are
>just all being pushed/pulled by Dynamic Quality to migrate and sometimes
>they create patterns on the next-higher level in the process.
>
>In your reply of 20/6 11:24 -0500 you quote Pirsig (via Ant McWatt). He
>indeed "closes up an opening to attack" on his MoQ when interpreted as
>merely an intellectual pattern of value, but leaves countless others. In
>the process it widens the chasm between the empirical and rational modes of
>knowing (see John's explanation 15:33 +1000 rephrasing Ken Wilber) on the
>one hand, which in my view are integrated by the MoQ, and the spiritual
>mode of knowing (Pirsig's "a Buddha’s level of understanding") on the other
>hand, because it precludes interpreting "DQ as goal of migrating patterns"
>as a metaphor. Pirsig disappoints me in this quote.
Hi Wim
I remember reading a story in one of Carlos Castenada's books about a thief
who waylaid an old man carrying gords full of food and water. The old man
called up a vision of a beautiful magical horse and told the thief he could
have his choice: the magical horse or the gords containing food and water.
The thief thought it a trick, believing if the old man could summon a
magical horse on demand that the gords held much more than just food and
water. "what do you really have in those gords?" he asked the old man. Once
again the old man told him it was food and water. The thief still did not
believe him, so he choose the gords. The old man handed them over and the
thief ran off clutching what he thought were magical gords. But when he
opened them all he found was food and water, just as the old man had said.
He smashed the gords against a rock and bemoaned his lost chance at
possessing a magical horse for the rest of his miserable life.
I view Ant's Pirsig quote like this: there is indeed a chasm between
rational and "spiritual" modes of knowing that cannot be obliterated by
thinking or meditating or zazen. Dynamic Quality is not open to
interpretation, only static quality is. We might say Dynamic Quality is
behind the interpretation but that is not exactly right either. As we are
deeply rational beings we regard any "spiritual" mode of knowing rationally,
but the more we struggle to uncover any rational truth of reality the
farther it recedes from our grasp.
Rationality's failure to uncover any rational truth that can be
substantiated should not be taken as an outright rejection of rationality,
however. In "the world of everyday affairs" rationality fuctions as the
highest (and the only) set of intellectual static quality patterns of value
available, while from "a Buddha's level of understanding" (and I've heard it
said Buddha nature has us all) rationality is merely a mode of knowing the
everyday world. As the children's song goes..."life is but a dream"...the
everyday world is a dream, albeit a rational dream.
Sometimes even when all we find is food and water (and what is more powerful
than food and drink when one is hungry and thirsty?) when we were expecting
untold riches instead, it is best simply to rejoice in what you have been
given.
>
>The rest of your reply of 20/6 11:24 -0500 confuses me. You seem to address
>the 3rd of my 4 defences with your quote from Michael Nagler's "Reading the
>Upanishads", but I don't quite see what point you are trying to make
>regarding the analogy I suggested. Are you trying to say that a MoQ CAN
>adequately express in words a more inclusive level of truth? Does your
>"evolutionary forces of value guiding each of the four levels being Dynamic
>and therefore unpredictable" contradict my analogy in your opinion?
>Please explain yourself.
Yes and no to both your questions; the Upanishad quote was offered in
conjunction with Ant McWatt's Robert Pirsig quote in hopes of throwing
further illumination upon your question of 18 June 2001:
>Unrelated moral codes? How do you mean??? I know "it only seems like that
>to intellect", as you write, but still my limited intellect is entangling
>itself in quite a lot of paradox when I try to square all this.
If a person could make a leap of faith by realizing "inner freedom" is the
only real freedom we have, then perhaps the preconditions for greater
clarity regarding the reflective nature of intellect will arise, and
furthermore, a person may come to "see" how completely unrelated moral codes
of value act simultaneously and heretofore unbeknownst to reflective
intellect. Sorry for the confusion but sometimes one must work for answers.
I could attempt to answer your questions but that would do either of us
little good. We'd just get into a debate. You must answer them for yourself,
as must we all. A piece of candy tastes good but I cannot tell you why. You
have to taste it yourself, then you just know it is good.
>
>With friendly greetings,
And to you as well
Dan
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