[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Mary]
Not an 'expansion' of intellect, but an overthrow of computer intellect
entirely.

[Arlo]
"Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle
infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of
reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has
to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that's what makes it hard to
see."

"We're living in topsy-turvy times, and I think that what causes the
topsy-turvy feeling is inadequacy of old forms of thought to deal with new
experiences. I've heard it said that the only real learning results from
hang-ups, where instead of expanding the branches of what you already know, you
have to stop and drift laterally for a while until you come across something
that allows you to expand the roots of what you already know. Everyone's
familiar with that. I think the same thing occurs with whole civilizations when
expansion's needed at the roots."

"You look back at the last three thousand years and with hindsight you think
you see neat patterns and chains of cause and effect that have made things the
way they are. But if you go back to original sources, the literature of any
particular era, you find that these causes were never apparent at the time they
were supposed to be operating. During periods of root expansion things have
always looked as confused and topsy-turvy and purposeless as they do now." (ZMM)

Apparently this is still "hard to see" for a few people trapped by
anti-intellectual blindness.

"Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better
world. They are taking it further and further from that better world." (ZMM)

What is need, and I am in full agreement with Pirsig here, is a new mode of
rationality, an expansion of rationality, a root expansion as he refers to it. 

This is not about deeming his highest static moral order by definition
cancerous, something to be raged against and defeated, but by seeing that
intellectual patterns, just like social patterns, come in many guises, and each
guise informs a particular orientation to "the world". 

Just as a Roman Catholic living in the villages outside Naples will have a
different orientation socially to his experiences than a Antakarinya tribesman
living in southern Australia. Both will "interpret" the world and orient his
activity around these particular social patterns he has habituated since birth.
One may see the trees as embodiments of spirits long departed, another may see
the trees as fuel to burn or timber to make large houses. One may walk around
the tree and bow to it, another may bring out an axe and chop it down.

Pirsig's genius recognized the same structurating effects of all levels, and
saw that the dominant western intellectual paradigm, descending from the
post-Sophist Greeks, was orienting or informing social patterns in a way that
was not good. His ability to think critically about the issue led him to
realize that what those in the West accepted as "intellect" was not some true
nature of intellect, but merely one particular orientation. 

And so he called for a root expansion of western rationality, from one based on
SOM premises to one based on what he termed MOQ premises.