[MD] Social Ants?

[Case]

To all who posted in this thread today.

I am back dating this response because skimming over the posts that followed
it all I see is degeneration into name calling. 
The Nazis? 
My God, Gentlemen. 

I believe there was a thread some time ago indicating that you know you have
won an argument when your opponent starts talking about Hitler. This is
precisely the sort of fractal rabbit hole that leads to no where. I wash my
hands of it.

Instead I would like to address this point made raised by Platt:

[Platt}
What seems to be missing in the discussion of the levels is any reference to
or acknowledgment of morals. IMO, the entire thrust and indeed the value of
Pirsig's MOQ is that the world is a moral order...

[Case]
What Pirsig purports to have developed is a METAPHYSICS of Quality. Warping
the MoQ into a purely political or moral philosophy strikes me as flat out
wrong.

Metaphysics is about determining first principles. Its purpose is to
identify a set of concepts that apply universally across all disciples and
are fundamental to the nature of things. It is not Pirsig's levels that are
significant it is his First Cut.

[Platt]
...not an order based on complexity, chaos, nodes, networks, systems or
other descriptions and theories subscribed to by materialists. 

[Case]
But that is précising what Pirsig's first cut offers. He explicitly says
that mystics will write the whole business off with a yawn. On the other
hand his metaphysics offers a concise and coherent way to understand and
appreciate the practical real world consequences of recent advances in
physics and mathematics.

By setting up his first principle as undefined then splitting it along the
lines of static and dynamic properties, he not only follows up on the 2500
year only philosophy developed by Taoists China, he applies it to Greek
thought and brings it into the western tradition. For both the Chinese and
the Greeks the fundamental division of the world was into Order and Chaos.
This is a very ancient line of thinking. The I Ching in China grew out of
the ancient's attempts to read order out of chaotic patterns in cracked
turtle shells. Greek cosmological mythology was all about the conquest of
Order over Chaos. Persian mythology is explicitly dualist along these same
lines.

Developments in mathematics over the past 25 years show that there is no
fundamental distinction between Order and Chaos. Order is a natural
outgrowth and subset of Chaos. Pirsig's MoQ provides a modern framework for
understanding this as the fundamental, universally applicable First Cut. It
is significant because it is not purely materialistic. The ideas of stasis
and change apply in the spiritual world as well as in the material. They are
more clearly seen in the material world because it is the world of
intersubjectivity, that is, we can all talk about it and have some basis for
agreement. 

But at the most fundamental level of physics three concepts stand out: 

Probability - Waves - Particles

These can easily be translated into the MoQ as: 

Quality - Dynamic - Static 

One of the most basic forms of energy is heat. It is in essence motion. It
has a range of possible values: Absolute Zero the absence motion or
absolutely static. Or Infinite Heat which is absolutely dynamic.

In the realm of probability as I have stated before Static mean certain
while Dynamic mean uncertain.

Mathematically in the Mandelbrot set a geometric form of infinite complexity
emerges from the balance of numbers that can either resolve to zero or spin
off into infinity. This figure shows infinite self similarity across scale.
Along the edge of this figure where zero and infinity remain in tension you
see how a self sustaining reaction of extraordinary beauty can emerge from a
background of apparently random numbers.

It was only possible to discover this form in the 20th century since it is
based on recursion. That is numbers are plugged into a formula and the
solution is feed back into the formula. The precision on the figure depends
on the number of iterations. You need a computer to calculate it because the
more iterations, the better the Resolution of the figure.  

This is no mere mathematical oddity. Its most outstanding property is self
similarity across scale. That is no matter how closely you look at it, or
how small a piece of it you examine, it has the same basic form. The shape
of this thing is approximated in nearly all living things. It's properties
are manifest in the inorganic realm and in the world of ideas. It can be
manifest in two, three, even four dimensions. Here is a concept that seems
to have universal application which derives from the balance of static and
dynamic properties.

In biology, evolution is entirely about the recursion of complex molecular
forms. Self replicating molecules develop in the particular region of space
and time because of the vast number of interactions made possible by the
combinations of elements and temperature that exist here in a static form.
The development of biological systems and their patterns of change across
time are entirely about the balance of static and dynamic properties
including the environment itself.

Social systems are an effective evolutionary strategy because collectively
individuals cooperating can better achieve balance of static and dynamic
properties in the environment. 


When Pirsig waxes eloquent about DQ I think he has misled us in a
fundamental way. It is not DQ that we recognize and respond to. It is the
balance of dynamic and static properties. A new song sticks in our heads or
evokes a welcome feeling not because it is Dynamic but because it is a new
form of balance we have not encountered before. In every instance where he
speaks of DQ in the way I believe you will find that it is not DQ alone that
attracts us. It is the balance, the harmony that we respond to. There is
only one response to the purely dynamic and that is terror.

Pirsig's metaphysics is valuable because his first cut actually is
applicable across such a broad spectrum on fields of study, conceptual
levels, dimensions and everyday life.

[Platt]
While there's nothing wrong per se in discussing other ideas of how the
world operates and evolves, it seems to me that unless moral values play a
dominate role, the conversation veers off track from the new paradigm Pirsig
has presented to us:

[Case]
This applies to everyone who posted today not just Platt:

It seems to me you to fail to see how significant Pirsig's initial
metaphysical cut really is. To continue mindless political tirades which
accomplish little and almost always end in name calling really just cheapens
Pirsig's contribution. Endlessly quoting him to justify personal prejudices
seems not only to miss the point but to be an actual disservice to what the
MoQ really has to offer. Shame on the lot of you for today's posts.


[Platt]
It is the battle of the moral codes within each levels that is key to 
understanding the MOQ. As Pirsig said, the battle between the social 
and intellectual levels is still going on in America today and the 
winner has yet to be declared -- the social morality of political 
correctness, multiculturism, diversity and affirmative action vs. the 
individual morality of freedom and personal responsibility.

[Case]
The MoQ is not about battling moral codes. It is about the balance of
opposing force of all kinds. You can not possible use this metaphysics
effectively if you do not appreciate what it really offers. I leave you with
this quote from the original source of Quality:


"The creative principle unifies 
the inner and external worlds. 
It does not depend on time or space, 
is ever still and yet in motion; 
thereby it creates all things, 
and is therefore called 
'the creative and the absolute'; 
its ebb and its flow extend to infinity. 
We describe the Tao as being great; 
we describe the universe as great; 
nature too, we describe as great, 
and man himself is great. 
Man's laws should follow natural laws, 
just as nature gives rise to physical laws, 
whilst following from universal law, 
which follows the Tao."