[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Arlo Bensinger]

Salutations Spiritual Adriondak,

My feeling is this, without even getting into whether there is or is not an 
Absolute (whether you call it God, Quality or Essence), we can never know 
It in any way other than through analogy. Ham's Essentialism is an analogy. 
The Koran is an analogy. The MOQ is an analogy. The bible is an analogy. Etc.

These are all cultural, metaphorical, analogues to describe "experience, 
reality, the void, the force, whatever...". We build these analogues within 
specific cultural frames, using metaphors that "make sense" within that 
particular "mythos", which is the sum total of these analogues used by a 
culture. We are guided in building these analogues by the other analogues 
available to us. This is how the mythos works, through the appropriation of 
a mythos, an individual is able to "make sense" of the world "within the 
guidelines (sanity) of that culture". DQ is the force "outside the mythos" 
that provides regeneration and destruction for the mythos.

Within the mythos (of any given culture or historical period) there is a 
gradient of metaphors that "harden". Some metaphors we are able to see as 
metaphors, others we forget their analogous nature and believe them to be 
"literal". This is why the critical moment in ZMM was the Chairman (as 
Aristotle) unable to see that the words "chariot guided by two horses" HAD 
to be an analogy, and instead insisted it was absolute, literal truth!

The hardening of metaphor is perhaps a natural outcome of habituated 
activity and use, but presents a danger to blocking DQ from being able to 
regenerate and destroy static patterns. With religion I think people do 
themselves a grave injustice by believing that THEIR "way of understanding 
'stuff'" is somehow not a cultural analogous representation, an essential 
part of the mythos but mythos nonetheless, and see the analogy as Absolute 
in Representation. The static patterns (what my God's name is) takes power 
over the unity of what Joseph Campbell calls the "monomyth", the underlying 
similarities that emerge when one examines mythos across historical and 
cultural boundaries.

Witness Ham's contention that the only right way to describe "whatever" is 
through HIS Essentialism. This is not, to him, an analogous way of 
organizing experience, but an absolute description that is right for all 
people, in all times, from all cultures. The same way that Christians feel 
that only THEIR book is a true account of God. In this manner of though, it 
is not, for example, true that both Christians and Sioux worship the same 
"whatever" but with differing cultural metaphors, but that the Christians 
are RIGHT and the Sioux are WRONG. Ham does not make the case that 
Essentialism provides a more powerful metaphor than the MOQ for 
understanding "whatever", he makes the case that Essentialism is RIGHT and 
the MOQ is WRONG, for all people, at all times, in all cultures.

In this way, I agree with what you mention regarding Gould's Hardening of 
Perspective, something akin to what Pirsig called the "static filter". The 
more our metaphors harden, the less we are capable of responding to DQ. But 
make no mistake, hardened or not, our descriptions of "whatever" are always 
analogies, they are always metaphors, and they are always part of the 
mythos. Ham may think he has uncovered The One True God, and is presenting 
The One True Path, but do not be duped, it may very well be a powerful 
metaphor, indeed, it may very well more powerful for him (and others) than 
the MOQ. But, it will always be a metaphor.

Arlo