[MD] Is Quality Value?

[Ham Priday]

Hey there, Platt --

Congratulations on the move.  Not to worry about falling behind ... there
hasn't been much going on here since Christmas.  At one point I began to
think that my Outlook Express mailbox wasn't working.

Before leaving us for the holidays, you wrote:

> Pirsig says a convicted murderer shouldn't be executed if he poses no
> threat to the structure of society, saying even a murderer has ideas, and
> ideas take moral precedence over society. I disagree with that view. I
> don't see any evidence that convicted murderers, rapists, pedophiles and
> other assailants can become messiahs.

Actually I don't agree with any part of that assertion.  If the moral basis
for clemency is that a criminal "has ideas which take moral precedence over
society", I don't buy it.  Since when are ideas more valuable than people?
What kind of morality is that?  Are we to victimize innocent people because
a murderer or rapist has ideas?  Don't the victims have ideas, too?  And was
it Pirsig's suggestion that a convicted murderer might become the next
messiah?  Frankly, I'm not impressed with the logic of the author's morality
system.

I submit that morality is based on the cultural values of society and,
therefore, that the principle of morality is to live in peace and harmony
with one's neighbors.  This may conflict with the personal values of a
homeopath, sadist, or thief, in which case society has the moral right to
deny such persons of their freedom.  In the case of an intractable murderer
or rapist, social justice may empower the legal right to take his life.

While I also believe that the highest existential value is individual
freedom, the exercise of that freedom must occasionally bend to the morality
of the culture or community.  In a free society the individual has the right
to choose his own values and express his ideas, however radical or perverse
they may be, although he may not force these values or ideas on others.  I
believe that morality system to be consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

Actually, I think we are in basic agreement with the "means and ends" of
morality, if not with the philosophy underlying them.  Your reference to the
crucifixion of Jesus by the "mob" as having been a "force for good" is an
astute observation.  There are several ways to look at this historical
event: 1) If there had been no crucifixion, there could have been no
resurrection associated with it, and Christianity would have died with
Jesus; 2) I've always believed that Jesus saw his mission as that of the
sacrifical lamb, making the "mob" complicit in this role; and 3) had their
been no messiah, as the Jews believed, possibly Neo-platonism or Judaism
itself might have become the predominant belief system of the Western World.
Would we have been any worse off?

> Hmmm. I'll duck the relative question for the moment to focus on
> "psycho-somatic value response."  I agree with you about that.
> One's experience occurs concurrently with valuation. We think
> of these two as separate--first the raw experience, then the valuation
> of whether it's good or bad. But, as Pirsig says,
> they are truly one and the same. Value is part and parcel of experience,
> built right into the nervous system, whether it be the nervous system of
> a clam, a cat or a human. Even a lowly bacterium knows when
> "It's better here."

Very diplomatically phrased, Platt.  Neither Pirsig nor I could attack that
overall epistemology.
The only point I would add is that, although experience and valuation may be
concurrent, the former consists mainly of "quantitative" sensory (somatic)
data interpreted by the intellect, while the latter is a "qualitative" or
sensual (psycho-somatic) response to the experience.  This makes Value
primary to Experience-if not in time, certainly in metaphysical importance.
All beingness has a primary value for us because we do not possess it but
can only observe it conceptually.  Value, on the other hand, is immanent by
virtue of the fact that we sense it directly, and because our realization of
it extends beyond beingness.

> "Might makes right" is the moral system of the biological level which
> fights the thin veneer of civilization all the time in its effort to
become the
> dominant morality. Society fights back in self-defense because a society
cannot
> survive under a "might makes right" morality where the only law is kill or
be
> killed.  We have so much trouble putting down terrorists because either we
don't
> understand the threat to our society, or because we don't have the moral
> ruthlessness necessary to fight them on their own terms. It is sickening
to
> witness our leaders worry about extending civil rights to terrorists while
a
> country like Iran is rushing pell mell to attain nuclear weapons to hold
Western
> civilization hostage.

Again, I cannot fault this argument.  So, we do agree on many things ;-).

> With all due respect, I don't think you answered my question. Are some
societies
> more moral, i.e. better, than others?

I'll use the Clintonian response.  It depends on what "more moral" means.
Who's making the judgment call?  Someone said that the morality of past
events is determined by the last historian to report on it.  Most of us
think we know what's good for ourselves.  We're not as certain about what's
good for society at large.  Give me a political platform or a cultural
ideology and I'll tell you what's good for it.  Otherwise, we go it alone.
Freedom is the ability to make decisions in the context of an indeterminate
reality.  If we knew what was best for society, we wouldn't need to ponder
these decisions.

> The great contribution of Pirsig is giving us a metaphysics where
> our moral judgements can be made on the basis or reason, not just what
> everybody, or some authority figure, says.

Praises be then to the great Pirsig, without whose contribution humanity
would be incapable of making moral judgments on the basis of reason!  Do you
really believe that, Platt?  You've made considerably more sense to me as a
moralist than RBP ever did.  Where in the world do you find a moral system
defined or explained in the novels of this author?   It seems the best he
could come up with was "some things are better than others", and that isn't
even morality.

> [Ham, previously]
> There's an old adage: 'We reap what we sow'.  I believe that the essence
of
> man is the value he nurtures in this relational world.  Value is our
finite
> sense of Absolute Essence, experienced "from the outside", as it were.
But
> because Essence transcends the relations of finitude, its value is never
> lost.  Like Eckhart, I also believe that the ultimate union of the "lover"
> and the "love object" (which is what Value really represents) is
infallible
> because the essence of every individual is that of his Creator.

> Sorry Ham, you lost me. Too abstract for me to comprehend.

I won't let you get away with that feeble excuse.  Let me try to explain it
more simply.  First of all, Value is not abstract; in fact, it's the least
abstract thing in the universe.  We live for our values.  Awareness of being
comes to mind as a pretty significant value.  Appreciating Beauty is
important to you, yet Beauty is not a being-it isn't a thing that exists in
time and space.  Do you consider Beauty an abstraction?  By developing our
sensibility to Value we increase our appreciation of it and enhance our
lives in innumerable ways.  This is what I mean by "nurturing our values",
"reaping what we sow.

The only connection we have with absolute Essence is Value.  Everything
else-including our "self"-is finite and impermanent.  Essence is not subject
to the limitations of human experience; it transcends all otherness, but we
don't.  Our stock in Essence is what we value, not what we are.  We know
what we value because we desire it.  As Socrates put it: "... the man who
desires something desires what is not available to him, and what he doesn¹t
already have in his possession; and what he neither has nor himself is-that
which he lacks-this is what he wants and desires."

What we want is the Value of Essence; our desire for it is the paradigm of
the "lover" for his "love object".  The conditional values in our
life-experience represent our essence as individuals.  It isn't our desire
for "being" or for a particular "other", but the values we realize in
being-aware that constitute our reality.  This value has a range that is
different for each individual.  As I said to you some time ago, it is this
value which "paints your portrait in the hall of Essence".  If there is such
a thing as man's immortal soul, it is his valuistic link to Essence.

I hope this makes my abstraction somewhat more palpable.

A happy and healthy New Year to you, too, Platt

Ham