[MD] The MoQ.org STRANGLES Creativity

[Ham Priday]

Steve, Platt, SA, all --

Steve has assailed me with an MoQ paradigm that I've heard only from the
Pirsigians and that still makes no sense to me.  I suppose there's no time
like the present to confront this ideology head-on.

> The cave man had no intellectual patterns.
> To choose the life of the cave man over your own
> would be to say goodbye to the life of the mind,
> and doing so would be a partial suicide.
>
> One reason we can say that your life is absolutely better
> than the cave man's is that you participate in intellectual
> patterns and he doesn't. You are a higher level of awareness.
> Broader perspectives are better than more narrow ones.

I'm told that I am "a higher level of awareness" because I "participate in
intellectual patterns", that I would have no "mind" without these patterns,
hence would be committing "suicide" were I to time-travel back 10,000 years
to the caveman.  This strange view of Consciousness would seem to suggest
that not only has man evolved as an organic species (a la Darwinism), but so
has something beyond the biological realm called Intellect (a la Pirsig).

Before I comment on Steve's premise, which may or may not precisely
represent RMP's ontology, I want to introduce you to Existentialism -- a
philosophy that was influenced by the writings of Hegel and Neitzsche and
was developed by the French philosophers Gabriel Marceau (who named it) and
Jean-Paul Sartre who popularized it throughout the Western World during and
after World War II.  I cut my wisdom teeth on Sartre's "Being and
Nothingness", and am convinced that it remains the underlying philosophy of
Modernism.  Yet, whenever I've cited Existentialism in this forum, I've
gotten blank responses.  (One participant even asked me what it was.)

Sartre himself was extremely analytical and a tough read.  But here is an
excellent 2-paragraph synopsis of Sartre's ontology by Benedict O'Donohoe
copied from PhilosophyNow On-line:

 "'Existence precedes essence'.  This is a crucial principle because it runs
counter to the main thrust of western thought from Plato to Hegel, via
Judaism, Christianity and Descartes.  What it claims is that there is no a
priori conception of humankind, whether as species or individual.  It
therefore disposes at one stroke with the Platonic realm of the ideal, with
the Judeo-Christian creator God, and with the Hegelian notion of the
Absolute Idea.  It is axiomatic for Sartre, as it was for Nietzsche, that we
inhabit a godless universe - a common-sense view, given the paucity and poor
quality of any evidence for his existence - so that there is no god-given
spirit that is distinct from our corporeal selves, and can exist before or
after or outside of our earthly lives.  Existentialism is therefore also a
counterblast to the capital Cartesian notion of the duality of mind and
'extension', or matter, summarised in the famous aphorism: Cogito ergo sum.
In effect, Sartre inverts this premise to say: Sum ergo cogito, I am
therefore I think, which is for Sartre the natural (arbitrary but actual)
order of things.

"For Sartre, by contrast with Descartes, consciousness is necessarily
embodied: it comes into being only with our advent in the world at birth,
and goes out of being with our exit from the world in death. In life,
however, consciousness itself is nothing, except insofar as it is
consciousness of something.  Take away all the things of which consciousness
is conscious, and you would have nothing left.  Whereas, Sartre argues,
consciousness can seize itself as conscious of something, it cannot seize
itself as conscious exclusively of itself, without being grounded in some
material object of which it is conscious.  We might well have the impression
that the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter is an accurate summary of our
condition, but this impression is a delusion.  The understanding of
ourselves as individuated is an empirical process of learning over time, not
an innate awareness."

I would recommend that you all review the entire essay titled "Why Sartre
Matters" at http://www.philosophynow.org/backissues/issue53.htm, and
acquaint yourselves with the father of Existentialism.  I would very much
like to hear whether you feel that Sartre's position on the Individual
(i.e., conscious awareness) is compatible with the MoQ.

Speaking for myself, relating Pirsig's thesis to Sartre's Existentialism
will help considerably in responding intelligently to Steve's statement.
I'm also giving some thought to putting the core issue of this discussion
under a new topic heading: Does existence precede essence?

Thanks for the attention, guys.

--Ham