LS Self in the MOQ
SQUAD: My addiction is hopeless. This evening I drove to the radio station, even though its my day off. I fear that Saturday the 31st, the next time I'm actually scheduled to work here, would have been too late. Its a sickness I thoroughly enjoy. Its not that I wish to have the last word or anything, but I've been very excited by some of these issues and I've recently discovered some ideas that seem directly connected to the mind/body bridge. There have been lots of great posts, but you may recall that I've been trying focus on the social level because it can be seen as that part of ourselves that connects the intellect (mind) with the biological organism (body). The underlying premise of this exercise is that the fictitous little editor behind the eye balls is not REALLY disconnected or lonely. Instead of the lonely editor, the MOQ self is an aspect of the total picture of reality. Instead of peering out at a world we can never know, the MOQ self is inherently involved in nature. The MOQ self is that very nature. The fully mature human individual participates in all static levels and DQ itself and is totally immersed in that reality. And I think a personal resolution of this issue not only clarifies what Pirsig has tried to say, I believe it has a healing power. It can begin to eliminate the terrible loneliness of the twentieth century one person at a time. And it goes a long way toward showing us how to become ourselves more fully. It is about an expansion of conciousness, a ripening of the self. "I was equally sure that none of the theologians I knew had ever seen "the light that shineth in the darkness" with his own eyes, for if they had they would not have been abble to teach a "theological religion," which seemed quite inadequate to me, since there was nothing to do with it but believe it without hope. I recognized that this celebrated faith had played this deadly trick on most of the cultivated and serious people I knew. The arch sin of faith, it seemed to me, was that it FORESTALLED EXPERIENCE." This quote from Jung's autobiography could just as accurately read "rigid static patterns forestall dynamic Quality. Obviously, he didn't have Pirsig's MOQ vocabulary when he wrote it, but it reminds of Pirsig's comment about the Bishop getting nervous when a Saint walks into the church. Jung was not in favor of doing away with the church, but thought that any Theology all by itself was hardly helpful in spiritual matters. In a letter to Protestant Theologian, Walter Uhsadel, he wrote... "It seems to me that the most important task of anyone who trains souls in the present is to show people a way of getting to the PRIMAL EXPERIENCE which for example Paul encountered most clearly on the Damascus Road. In my experience this way opens up only in the process of the development of the individual soul." (Psyche) Again, it pretty darn Pirsigian. Primal experience stikes me as just another way of saying primary empirical reality or direct experience. And his mention of Paul's transformation on the road to Damascus reminds me of Pirsig's own transformational episodes in Chicago and the peyote teepee. And the nightmares he described in ZAMM, where he was imprisioned behind glass and disconnected to his family, FEELS like the need to break out of the static lonely self. It FEELS like a nightmare because we yearn to gulp life rather that drink it through a straw. Gerhard Wehr says that all of Jung's work as a psychologist directed him to see everything as one complex reality, to develop a "universal picture of reality that embraces human beings and the world, psyche and matter." Even before the MOQ was born Jung imagined that soul and form are two aspects of the same reality, that mind and matter are the same "thing". As Wehr puts it, "What he means is the reality that can at one time be described as material being and at another as a dyanamic of the psyche". Its pretty interesting that he even manages to use the word "dynamic" in a quasi-Pirsigian way. But it gets even better. Wehr continues... "This UNUS MUNDUS (the one world) was to play a role above all in Jung's later works, when he had a fruitful exchange with the physicist and Nobel prize winner Wolfgang Pauli. The studies produced in this connection show that the depth psychologist discloses possibliities of knowledge that point far beyond the original task of the physician and therapist. The collaboration proved to be fruitful because parallelism of thought models arose in psychology and physics. Jung became convinced that the same unconscious that harbors the archetypical images of great religious relevance must also be connected to INORGANIC matter. He thought that in the last resort PSYCHE AND MATTER ARE TO BE SEEN AS THE TWO POLES OF ONE AND THE SAME REALITY..." I have to say, if this doesn't remind you of the SODV paper you're really not paying attention. Is this an exciteing parallel or what? In their collaboration, Jung and Pauli even came
Re: LS Self in the MOQ
Rob quickly responds to Bo and David before month's end... Bodvar, I'm glad we're buds again! *smile*. Your last post helped. But, one clarification could help momentously! You said that "A non-dualistic SOM makes no sense." It appears, however, the Pirsig mainly defends the MOQ against such a non-dualistic SOM. Pirsig said that it is ridiculous to distance oneself from experience or try to reduce experience to physics. But that is only the quest of a materialist. If one accepts dualism, where experience is separate from physics/structure, where is the redicularity? What's the big problem? I repeat my original question: Does Pirsig discuss duality? Please understand this is very important to me and -- if resolved -- I would be forever indebted!! And if you have time, another slant... Yes, only the intellect creates a notion of self. One will never find a self missing under a rock, or hear a self clinking around in the brain. But, by intellectually conceding there is an external reality, one can then concede also that there must be a self apart from -- but attending to -- external reality. Since you applauded John for bringing back the self, can you think of a way to do this without some type of dualism? Does the experience vs. materialism duality debate now escalate to self vs. value? And by doing this, don't we lose time/space/structure. RJS --- David, I am very curious how you define your terms and ask for some clarifications... You say that 1. "... we exist as a kind of unique culture made of the four levels." 2. "... the social level is the link between the mind and the body." 3. "... to get a whole picture of the MOQ self we have to look at the social level [the bridge]." I'm pretty sure I follow you in (1) and (3). In (1) the four levels comprise the entire spectrum of experience. And we are our experiences. I find it impossible to imagine there being a "me" if I did not experience anything. In (3) I think you are saying basically the same thing as (1) with emphasis that we tend to forget the social level which is needed to put everything together. The very interesting part is (2). What exactly do you mean by "mind"? The intellectual level/aspect of experience or the stream of consciousness (all experience)? And what do you mean by body? Do you mean the body things we experience or -- with your notion of time/space -- are you conceding it is a physical *object* that maintains its structure despite experience? I have not thought through the four possibilities, but I sense some good debate coming. Its a shame this month is ending so quickly... Regards, RJS MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
Re: LS Self in the MOQ
To all Lila Squad Time is running out for this month's topic, allow me a commentary to some of the participants. JOHN BEASLEY. I was greatly encouraged by your message of 25 July. Joel Kovel's idea of self as a continuum from ego to soul seems to be compatible with the MOQ view as it has crystallized from this session. The lonely self (as you understood the MoQ before) is now brought into the fold again. I wish that Pirsig hadn't uttered remarks like the "mirror" one, it's a lapse to SOM from which the master should have refrained. If the SOLAQI idea is to become "canonized", the ego/self of Intellect is no more - or less - illusory than the rest of the static hierarchy. The SOLAQI implies that the Q-idea is a tentative groping for foothold beyond intellect and that fits your "healthy" self idea. A movement beyond intellect will necessarily build on its (lone) self (dualist) nature, but transcend it into a self who sees the underlaying dynamic quality common to all levels (soul). > In summary, Pirsig loses the opportunity to respond to the emptiness > and lonelines of modern lives, by throwing out the self as just a > collection of patterns of rather vague outworkings of Quality. > The self is actually the 'baby' which needed rescuing from the > 'bathwater', and Robert's pithy summary of Krishnamurti, and > his application of the dynamic/static understanding to the self, > produces the integrating concept needed to build a much more > satisfactory (and satisfying) metaphysics. I feel a sense of elation > at how this is coming together. Well Phdrus (of LILA) did perhaps not get everything absolutely right in his first effort, but let's distinguish him from Robert M Pirsig who recently said (in a letter to the squad) that we are exploring the territory that he opened up. Your allegory of the self as a baby who needs rescuing from the bathwater was splendid. This is perhaps what this month's effort has resulted in? ROBERT STILLWELL Thanks for accepting my criticism so positively. I hope you'll be as magnanimous this time too, because, even if I appreciate the time and effort put into your post of 24 July (LS Cartesian - not SOM dualism) you keep reinventing the gunpowder. Glassness as different from the physical thing! This is Aristoteles' horseness vs the actual animal: Essence and substance two thousand years thereafter. This Aristotelian notion (not yet fully SOM, but more so than Platons idea vs the shadows of appearance) hibernated through the Middle Ages and re-emerged with the Renaissance and went through many phases - first - Spinoza's God/attributes of God, later Descartes' less theological and more epistemological doubt if there was an I (self) at all. Then empiricism which found that there is no self only experience, and finally Kant who tried to save the self by pointing to its innate "a priori" (before experience) space/time/causality qualities. After Kant nothing of interest has been said (until Pirsig), everything seesawed between these two extremes: the world our creation/we the creations of the world. A non-dualistic SOM makes no sense. "Matter only" is materialism and "mind only" is idealism. But - notice - no sooner has the two parties made their claim before they are forced to invoke the counterpoint. This is elemental, we cannot get hung up into these worn-out positions lest the MOQ falls prey to a first grade philosophy student. The MOQ puts an end to all this, not by solving it inside the SOM context (the paradoxes of Greek physics simply vanished in the light of the new physics), but by jettisoning the subject-object notion - as a primary reality (in whatever disguise it tries to sneak back under) and adopting a new metaphysics: the MOQ. However, the EXPERIENCE of old Greece didn't disappear: spears flew, tortoises crawled and Achilles ran. Likewise, the phenomena of SOM don't disappear: only their paradoxical quality, we experience a SELF different from other (external world), only now it can be seen as the natural outcome of the new meta-PHYSICS. What we are discussing is how the SOM can be incorporated in the MOQ. My claim is that the self/not self-dualism IS the intellectual level itself. Other have forwarded less radical suggestions. So has the master himself. DAVID L THOMAS You bring Pirsig's words to our attention (from a letter to Ant McWatt I think) : > "...the intellectual pattern that says there is an external world of > things out there which are independent of intellectual patterns. > That is one of the highest quality intellectual patterns there is. > And in this highest quality intellectual pattern, external objects > appear historically before intellectual patterns, not after, as is > commonly presumed by the materialists." [RMP] Pirsig doesn't exactly endorse the SOLAQI here, rather says that Subject-Objectivism is ONE intellectual pattern. Yet, as this definitely is its most importan
LS Self in the MOQ
Thanks to all the posters! I was glad to see John B's gumption infusion, Bodvar's return and Rich's remarkable posts. There are lots of interesting issues and tangents that deserve discussion, but I'd like to focus this post on the PSYCHOLOGY of the self. Maybe the word "psyche" is a better description of the focus. I'm going to use a little of that kind of language, to avoid repeating Rich's spiritual vocabulary if nothing else. I think it might be useful in distinguishing the levels within each individual SELF. No one doubts that our existence includes the physical body, that the biological organism exists in time and space. In a subject/object world, the existence of the ego consciousness is painfully clear and often exaggerated to the point of excluding of everything else. Re-thinking the ego as the intellectual level seems easy enough. But to get a whole picture of the MOQ self I think we have to look at the social level. Its the bridge. Pirsig's metaphysic is certainly meant to do away with that editor behind the eyes, but in another sense the MOQ rescues those undeniable mental and emotional states from being "merely subjective". In the MOQ the "merely subjective" is evelated to an empirical reality, a "real" experience. So if I speak of the self as a mind or psyche, please trust that I understand how radically re-imagined is the self in the MOQ and please understand that I'm not thinking of the lonely, isolated, SOM self. It seems everyone pretty much agrees that we exist as a kind of unique culture made of all four levels. And I guess its pretty clear that the social level is the bridge between the mind and body. Both the biological and intellecual levels come into conflict with the social level. And as Bodvar pointed out, each level is inextricably linked to it parent level. Thus the intellect is not an independant or autonomous mind. Instead the intellectual self in deeply embedded in social level values and is totally DEPENDANT on its parent. The self is integrated or glued together by this family lineage. I guess one could say the kinship of the levels is part of the "coherence" of the self. It seems that the power of the social level is largely unconscious. Social values are, among other things, unexamined assumptions given to you by the culture and language of your world. They can be brought out into the light and examined by the intellect to a certain extent, but that's only the tip of the iceberg and there is an immense force hidden below the ego's awareness. The workings of this level of reality are no less complicated ,subtle and mysterious than the biological level. And it must be just as rich and diverse as life itself too. The mythos is no small thing. Its a pretty hefty chunk of what we are. I suppose no one can afford to ignore it. And I think Pirsig makes the case that the big problem with SOM is exactly that ignorance. MAYBE MIRRORS ARE ALL YOU EVER GET. Pirsig says that sex IS TO biology as celebrity IS TO society. Or something like that. Celebrity is huge. Celebrities are the mirrors we share collectively, unlike our family and friends. They are the heros, saviors, saints, gods and monsters that we all recognize. Celebrities reflect images on hehalf of the Giant. The giant controls the mirrors for its own purposes. Its a culture's way of unconsciously communicating which values will be rewarded and which will be punished. All the myths and legends tell of the deeds of celebrities. Its almost as if the roles were pre-existing forms of behavior that certain individuals "play" or act out. Its a role inhabited by different people over and over with endless variations on the theme. Not that heros are insincere phonies, but it seems countless people have been cast as celebrities thru time. The need has to be met continually, generation after generation, if a culture is to survive and evolve. Carl Jung imagines that some portion of the unconsious mind contains a collective unconscious. In it are all the archetypes that are the basis of our attraction to heros and movie stars. The unconscious role-models we share are a symbolic expression of the cultures most deeply held values and an expression of your own desires. What do you want to be when you grow up? In what capacity do I want to serve the giant? Do I want to kill the giant? Has the giant really become a monster or am I just a degenerate loser? Yes, the revolutionary is archetypical too. As Rich might say, its the soul's way of objectifying its values, at least on the social level. The heroic attributes and divine qualities that we value are projected outward and idealized, so as to be realized, demonstrated and articulated. It functions to perpetuates a culture like sex perpetuates the species. Unfortunately, our contemporary celebrities aren't gods and heros, so much as movie stars and politicians. Our mirrors seem corrupt and hollow. This is a symptom of the terrible loneliness of our century. As Paul
LS Self in the MOQ
Are we too selfish? Are we to sell fish? Maybe I should shelf this. Why not start with "the best definition of YOU that's ever been invented"? "You're a sort of culture, a culture of one. A culture is an evolved static pattern of quality capable of dynamic change." And Pirsig's description of Lila seems to say the same thing... "She's a cohesion of changing static patterns of this Quality. ...The words Lila uses, the thoughts she thinks, the values she holds, are the end product of three and a half billion years of the history of the entire world. She's a kind of jungle of evolutionary patterns of value." (Thanks for giving us the right quotes, Diana!) I'd like to encourage the whole squad to keep them in mind through July. Pirsig himself says it is the best definition. I ask for shell fish reasons too; the computer metaphor is all but lost on me. In spite of the frustration expressed, I think we are pretty close to sorting out the issue. In fact, Rich pretty much nailed it in his "soul-daddy sources" post. Who could argue with such solid advice as "smoke a hooley"? But seriously East meets West! Damn straight! As pretentious as it may sound, Pirsig's MOQ is a global metaphysic. It is both Eastern and Western. There is no going around the Mysticism of it. If it is equated with DQ, then mysticism is at the very heart of the MOQ. And this bears upon our present discussion because the "Self" is a creation of DQ. But as Rich said the "real difficulty is the incredible immensity of ground to be covered". We're talking about three and a half billion years and the entire world, after all. So let me back up and address Diana's discomfort. She says, "Even if intellectually I can see the irrationality of the subject-object metaphysics, it's another thing entirely to decide that I don't exist." and comes to the conclusion that "we're patterns, not things". This reminds me of Bo's "leaves in a storm" metaphor and my own early post where I struggled to reconfigure the dictionary definition into MOQ terms. But I think all this talk has helped. The problem with SOM's Cartesian self, that fictional editor behind the eyes, is that it is disconnected. In a world where only subjects and objects exist, Descartes could say, "I think, therefore I am". But in the MOQ he has to say, "French society exists, therefore I think, therfore I am." The SOM self ignores the social level of values. The Cartesian self has giant hole in it's center. This same misconception is at the root of the mind/body problem, the amorality of "objective" science and the terrible loneliness of our century. Its all part and parcel of the same problem. If the four levels in the MOQ's ontological scheme are imagined as four bricks stacked with inorganic on the bottom and intellect at the top, then the SOM ego floats in thin air. The social brick doesn't really exist and the Cartesian ego hovers suspended a brick's width away from the bio brick. Hence it is disconnected from its own body! The MOQ's solution is not to deny the existence of the self, simply to redefine it in such a way as to undo the fictional little editor, that disconnected, lonely, objective observer. I think this is the stubborn self that needs to be eliminated, but that is not the same as denying our very existence. This gets at all those questions we've had so far. What attends? What coheres? What unifies the stream of sensory impressions? I think all these questions are due to a Cartesian hangover from last night's SOM party. They all smell like little editors. The MOQ gets rid of them. Pirsig does this by showing how the intellectual level is the offspring of the social level. Then the ego self, the Cartesian thinker, can be re-imagined as deeply embedded rather than lonely, as a participant rather than an objective observer and as a product of a value based evolutionary process rather than a random occurance in an indifferent cosmos. The mind and body are joined back together by the social level. In the five moral codes, conflict with the social level is exactly what the biological and intellectual levels have in common. The social level connects the mind to the body and connects our existence to "the history of the entire world". We are, like Lila, "a cohesion of changing static patterns". We ARE the cohesion. We're each an "evolved static pattern of quality capable of dynamic change" and a "jungle of evolutionary patterns of value". All the levels of static patterns exist within each of us. Its a real jungle in there. When we ask the question of self in the MOQ, maybe we really need five answers to five questions. What is a human individual on each of the four levels and how does the coherence of it all ensure further dynamic growth? I think it safe to assume that we actually exist in time and space, as a physical being with a mind, but lets not forget that we are social level creatures too. And for God's sake, don't forget the entire evolutionary process is l
