[MD] What is the meaning of Value?

[Ham Priday]

SA -- May we call you 'Dack' for short?


You ask:
> What is the meaning of Value and how do we have a
> sense of longing for something that is already here
> with us?  What is here with us?  I say using Ham's
> term, it is Essence, because Essence is All that is
> and we are a Part of All that is.

What a fascinating topic!  Of course (as if you didn't know) it's a germinal
element of my Philosophy of Essence.  And the question you pose -- What is
here with us? -- is a good place to begin.  Let's explore that question.

After I asserted that "we have no Essence", you complimented me on the
wording, then said, "Yet, Essence is everywhere and is all, thus, we do have
Essence."  Obviously, there's at least one "loose end" that needs to be
tightened here.  I think there is an important distinction to be made
between the definition of Essence as absolute 'is-ness' and saying that
Essence is everywhere.  "Where" and "when" are existential conditions that
presuppose space and time.  Essence is unconditional; it has no place or
time, therefore "everywhere" is meaningness in an absolute context.

In existence -- the world as we know it -- there are gaps or voids in
beingness that we call "nothingness".  If it weren't for these gaps, there
could be no distinctions, no separation of one object from another.  For
example, we say this table is "here", that window is "there".  The spacial
distance between here and there is a gap in our intellection or cognizance
of these two objects.  That allows us to make the logical observation that
some things -- light, or the air we breathe -- are "everywhere".  But we
can't say that about Essence.

In fact, we can't say that about our selves.  We're each identified with a
particular being that is our body and that has a specific location in space
and time.  But where is the "self" of this body?  If you're a materialist
you'll say that it's the body's cerebro-neural system.  Yes, that's the
functioning instrument; it accounts for the organism's awareness, but it is
not awareness per se.  Awareness itself has no space/time locus.  In
existential terms, it has no empirical being; it can't be observed,
quantified, or localized.  Proprietary awareness is a "nothingness".

Back to your question: What is here with us?  Essence is "with" us, but we
don't possess it.  It lies "outside" of our conscious awareness.  This is
the paradigm of existential duality: self vs. otherness.  Some here will
dismiss the self, arguing that it is a meaningless biological artifact or an
egotistical attribute of man's nature, that subject/object duality is
archaic, that what "really matters" is the evolutionary universe "out
there".  Well, if all that matters is "out there", then what are YOU?
Certainly nothing significant or meaningful.

As you know, I don't subscribe to that theory.  I believe that existence was
designed with the individual human being as its central agent.  We sense
Essence abstractly, as an otherness comprised of a diversity of things that
possess the beingness we don't have.  We desire, manipulate, and collect
these things because they represent the 'is-ness' which we are not. Above
all, we cling dearly to our own awareness, because without it we would lose
this attachment to beingness.  Thus, our primary value is seen as personal
survival -- "to be" -- in life and (hopefully) in death as well.  But our
value is misdirected.  The value we seek is not to be found in created
beingness but in its uncreated Source.

As Eckhart taught, "authorities say that God is pure being, but he is as
high above being as the highest angel is above a fly, and I say that it
would be as incorrect for me to call God a being
as it would be to call the sun light or dark."

Once we understand the true source of Value, we suddenly find ourselves able
to realize and appreciate all kinds of value that had no meaning to us
before.

Anyway, that's what I think, Dack.  I'm sure the MoQers will have a
different take on Value, particularly as they understand Quality to be their
essential reality.

(Then again, we may have lost them entirely.)

Good luck,
Ham