[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Ham Priday]

Dack --


> Quietness and stillness - here are some examples.
> For Quietness:  Look into the sky, What do you
> hear?  Is it quiet?  When your mind has no
> particular thoughts, What is coming out of your mind?
> Isn't the mind quiet?  (For me, this quiet is more
> stable in connecting with the universe than thoughts.
> Thoughts are always changing and need education,
> meanwhile when the thoughts are absent the quietness
> coming from the mind allows for Everything in
> Existence to flood the mind and we have a direct
> experience of what is here.)

I'm sorry, but I see all this as a description of your passive state of
mind, rather than a metaphysical concept of Essence.  Perhaps you regard
"stillness" and "quietude" as representative of the nothingness that
permeates the universe.  But I think there is value in the dynamics of the
world, too.  Consider music, for example.  It's all movement, transition, a
theme working its way to a conclusion.  Look at the works of man -- history,
theater, dialogue, even the evolution of thought.  You cite the sky and the
bark of a tree.  But even such seemingly inanimate things are in constant
transition: atoms in motion, light waves of high frequency, seasonal
changes, different perspectives, alternating shadows, clouds and darkness.
In no way can anything experienced be devoid of change.  So why settle for
only the most static appearances?

> When does Stillness and Action become distinct and
> become conditions of Essence?  Is it before Awareness
> v. Otherness or after Awareness v. Otherness?

As I've said before, Essence has no condition(s).  All conditions are
exclusive to the existence.  "Conditions" are an aspect of the actualized
world that we experience as a consequence of our negated nothingness.  Time
and space are the framework for all conditions -- including evolution,
finitude, position, number, size, power, and physical relations.

> As to morals, I made this point long ago.  How
> can we as a society make anything up that does not
> exist outside of ourselves?  Even superman is just
> bits and pieces of others things put together in
> another way that becomes a comic book hero.  So what
> or where are the bits and pieces coming from that we
> as society put together to get what we call morals, as
> relative as they might be from society to society?
> Since all societies have taboos and norms does that
> mean their is an essence of morals that exists and we
> as people tap into these conditions that teach us low
> and high quality experiences that we begin to value

I'm extremely disappointed to find you reciting Pirsigian scripture so early
in our discussion.  If you are going to start throwing the notion of "people
tapping into conditions" (of value) at me, you will force me to withdraw.
Morality is not a collective principle hanging out there in space for us to
tap into.  I've gone around this bush too many times.  Value is an innate
sensitivity of the INDIVIDUAL to certain kinds of experience that represent
what the individual lacks.  It is a conditional experience because it is an
imperfect, finite impression of the essential source.  Each person develops
his own sense of value and is free to choose those values with which he
identifies in the life-experience.  Man creates his own unique value system;
it is not imposed on him.  This is an anthropocentric world, and man is the
autonomous choicemaker of existence.

> Since Essence is everything then Morals are Essence too.
> What do you think?

I do not buy your notion of "everythingness".  The multiplicity of things is
an illusion of the nothing-self (negate) trying to catch a glimpse of
Essence in being.  Morality is based on this conditional multiplicity.
There is nothing conditional or illusionary about Essence.

Sorry to be so contrary, but I feel that I haven't made as much progress as
I had thought.  I suppose there are still too many loose ends in our
conceptual understanding to advance into a value discussion at this
juncture.

Regards,
Ham