[MD] The MoQ.org STRANGLES Creativity

[david buchanan]

Stephen, Case and all STRANGLERS of Creativity:

Case made a case:
The fault here is not with the average lunch bucket in the pew so much as 
with a clergy that is either aggressively ignorant or out right fraudulent. 
Christianity has survived 2000 because it is plastic enough to meet the 
spiritual needs of Greek and African slaves, Roman emperors, European Kings 
and Peruvian Indians. It survived the middle ages and the enlightenment. It 
will survive modernity and postmodernity (which sounds futuristic to me).

dmb says:
You think Christianity will survive modernity and postmodernity? You think 
it lasted so long and spread so far because its "plastic enough to meet the 
spiritual needs"? And the problem is the fault of ignorant frauds within the 
churches? Yikes. I gotta disagree with you on every point. As I see it, 
Christianity is already dead and questions about its survival are quite 
pointless. I think it lasted as long as it did and spread as widely as it 
did mostly because it was backed up by force. And it was spread to other 
cultures in the same historical process that also spread slavery, genocide, 
disease, colonization and imperialism in general. That picture is darker 
than it needs to be, but you see my point. The myths are still very powerful 
and attractive. I don't think we'll ever be able to ditch that because myths 
are at the very core of our social level values and are connected to the 
very structure of our consciousness. I mean, the myths seem to shine through 
despite the work of the theologians. I also think that postmodernity is 
gonna have to find a way to include the "spiritual" dimension, for lack of a 
better word. But theism itself, by which I mean nothing more than the 
conventional definition; the belief in a supernatural creator, a supreme 
governor of the universe. As I understand it, the MOQ rejects all things 
supernatural. And yet DQ is equated with religious mysticism. Like Zen 
Buddhism, its a "religion" without a theistic God.

dmb had said:
In this view evolution is not a definance of the existing order so much as 
an expansion or additon to it. For example, the way the MOQ asks us to dust 
off the social level codes. And just as the human animal had to give up 
certain things when society came along, things like theft, rape and murder, 
so we have to give up certain social level things now that intellect has 
come along. I mean, things like racism, sexism, and all that chosen people 
kind of stuff is the vestiage of our evolutionary history. But shedding some 
obsolete features is not the same as trashing or defying the point and 
purpose of these lower codes. Its  just part of the taming, guiding process. 
Or so it seems to me.

Case replied:
I am not sure I see your meaning about rape theft and murder being the norm 
before the intellect came along, though. As social creatures I believe those 
evils were moderated socially long before intellect came along....

dmb says:
Right, those evils were moderated by social level values. I quoted myself up 
above to show you that I'd already said that. Those evils are among the 
"animal" values, by which I mean biological level values.

Case continued:
As for race and sex isms those really only began to seem even a little odd 
in the last half of the last millennium. Frankly we have handled them pretty 
well considering. From an MoQ point of view they interest me because of the 
rate at which a need for change was demanded and implemented. It is the rate 
of change overall that is the most significant challenge for the future.

dmb says:
The last 500 years would make sense. That's about when the pre-moden world 
began to unravel. But I think there needs to be a real sense of urgency 
about ditching the various forms of hate and prejudice simply because its 
been so bloody lethal. Its ugly and regressive and evil. The world is just 
too small for that shit now. And I think its no accident that so much of the 
world's fear and violence has to do with the conflict between religions.

dmb had said:
As I understand it, the MOQ says we gotta get rid of the theism.

Steve H quoted Pirsig, page 310 and 262 of ZMM in response:

"I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who 
connects with Quality.  He gets filled with gumption.  The Greeks called it 
"enthousiasmos, the root of "enthusiasm," which means literally "filled with 
theos," or God, or Quality.  See how that fits?"

"In the area of Religion, the rational relationship of Quality to the 
Godhead needs to be more thoroughly established, and this I hope to do much 
later on.  For the time being one can meditate on the fact that the old 
English roots for the Buddha and Quality, God and good, appear to be 
identical."

Steve H said:
I don't think it is Pirsig's goal to be hostile toward religion. Certainly 
it contributes some kind of Positive Social Quality if it successfully 
creates a sense of community.  The problem in this country is that 
consumerism has such a hold on this country that it has nearly destroyed our 
sense of community.  For example,..

dmb says:
Thanks for the quotes. But I disagree. I mean, the "rational relationship of 
Quality to the Godhead" was more thoroughly established in LILA and in 
Pirsig's "Copleston annotations". Here are the most relevant ones...

180 "The MOQ supports religion but does not support many Christian 
traditions."

193 "Quality is nature. The MOQ says there is no spiritual principle in man 
that makes knowledge possible. Nature does the whole job."

208 "The MOQ would add a fourth stage where the term "God" is completely 
dropped as a relic of an evil social suppression of intellectual and Dynamic 
freedom. The MOQ is not just atheistic in this regard. It is anti-theistic."

216 "Faith is not required for an understanding of Quality. Here Quality 
succeeds where Bradley's Absolute and Hegel's Being and the Buddhist 
Nothingness and the Hindu Oneness and the theists' God and Allah and 
you-name-it, all of them fail. For Quality, no faith is required because 
there is no way you can disbelieve that there is such a thing as quality. 
You cannot conceive of or live in a world in which nothing is better than 
anything else."

228 "The MOQ does not rest on faith. In the MOQ faith is very low quality 
stuff, a willingness to believe falsehoods."

235 "When you hear the words 'spirit' and 'faith' always look for a 
traditional religionist trying to sneak his goods in the back door. ...like 
the positivists, the MOQ drops spirit and faith, cold."

dmb resumes:
I certainly agree that a sense of community is important, but I don't see 
why that sense has to be centered around religious beliefs. In fact, I think 
this notion confuses social values with Dynamic Quality. It confuses social 
conventions with spiritual development. I certainly think that the lonely 
and alienated feelings described in ZAMM and LILA are attributed to 
scientific materialism, which had replaced theism as the dominant 
world-view. So I can see how a person could make such a connection. But I 
think the cure is to fix this flaw in the scientific world view rather than 
return to theism. In other words, the trick is to expand rationality so that 
we can have an intellectually respectable form of spirituality.

Steve H said:
If church leaders actually addressed the problem of declining sense of 
community, religion would actually be beneficial.  Instead, we have people 
like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who serve their own ego and their 
party instead of the church.

dmb says:
I think capitalism and industrial culture, individualism and social 
darwinism have much, much more to with the loss of community. And a lot of 
it has to do with mass media and the sheer speed and scale of things. How do 
you have a sense of community when you live in a city with millions of other 
people? Its tough to stop and say hello when you driving by at 65 or flying 
over at ten times that speed. And if Pirsig is right, there is a flawed 
rationality that lies beneath all this technology.

As I see it, the MOQ rejects scientific materialism and theism. As I said to 
Matt in the "How is atheism a religion?" thread in response to his "point 
about the pointlessness of God-talk. I think we ought to ditch the idea of a 
supernatural creator being and re-examine a lot of that God-talk. You know, 
if you don't take the low-grade yelping about God too literally and all 
that. I think that we gotta ditch the idea that there is some intelligent 
entity seperate from us and/or beyond human experience and look at that 
material as if it refered to a certain kind of human experience, an aspect
of our reality instead. Theism is what you get when this stuff is taken too 
literally, see? I think one of the main reasons that believers have trouble 
coming up with any kind of proof, trouble coming up with some basis in 
experience for the existence of the theistic God is because the whole notion
is based on a profound misreading of God-talk. I think its not quite enough 
to simply deny the existence of this supernatural entity, although I agree 
with that as far as it goes. But the trick is to avoid throwing the baby out 
with the bathwater. The God-talk that goes on in the world's Great
religions may have drawn up some pretty confused and misleading maps, but 
that doesn't mean there's no territory there worth charting properly. I've 
become quite convinced that this stuff points to some of the most 
interesting of human experiences. I mean, this baby is well worth saving. 
Again, dusting off and sorting out rather than total abandonment."

Thanks.

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