[MD] Just coincidence?

[Arlo Bensinger]

Greetings Peter,

It has been remarked that the "Gates to Truth" are guarded by the twin 
forces of Paradox and Confusion. Any attempt to enter, by turning your back 
on these, leaves Truth closed behind you. It is also the case that the 
deeper one tries to explain DQ, the more one is forced to rely on analogy 
and metaphor. Of course, Pirsig never spelled out the process ontology of 
his metaphysics, something that keeps Ham actively promoting his very 
developed ontology. Me, personally, I don't need a defined process 
ontology, mostly because I think such a thing can't be known, and can only 
be vaguely and tangentally approached via metaphor. So as it is, I can only 
offer what few thoughts I have.

Pirsig has only described the evolutionary development of static patterns 
as that which lies in the wake of the creative force. As such, I don't 
consider the creative force (DQ) as having any predestined "will" in the 
creation of static patterns. That is, the static patterns as we see them 
today (and remember that the MOQ is only an analogy to describe experience) 
we not "preconceived" to evolve as they did, they evolved so only because 
at any given moment in evolution it was "best" for them to do so. Could we 
envision another possible outcome of evolution where the layers are 
different? Sure. I can, anyway.

Next is the "necessary/unnecessary" role of "man" in the evolution of the 
universe. Some find their meaning in the belief that "man" has a "divine 
destiny" atop creation, that all was created solely (or mostly) so that 
"man" could assume the throne. But when you look at the vast reaches of 
space, the enormous time frame that has been "existence", and the little 
blip on the time-space map that is "man", it is hard (and to me, 
unimportant) to assume man has any "divine" role. That is, the universe did 
not seek to create man, and was not created "for" man. Man exists because 
an evolutionary unfolding of static patterns emerged as it did on our 
specific time-space local. I'm sure such a sentiment will have those who 
embrace the "divinity of man" crying nihilism, but that's (to me) something 
that is a weakness in their own psyches, not something lacking in mine.

So, for me, the first question you have to ask is whether the creative 
force "strove" to create you, or whether you are the blessed recipient of 
an evolutionary process that happened to unfold via static latching to give 
"you" the "ability" to ask such a question. If you find yourself in the 
first camp, your interpretation of the MOQ will be likely different than 
mine (process ontology-wise).

When you say, "dynamic quality could ONLY manifest through the inorganic", 
I find myself seeking to "knife" the world "only". Then, like Pirsig's 
excising of "just", you end with a truism. "Dynamic Quality could manifest 
through the inorganic". It is the word "only" that, I think, separates 
those who seek a process ontology that places man as the willful creation 
of a predetermined plan to have superiority over all else, and a process 
ontology that places man as the nonpredetermined recipient of an 
evolutionary process, which may "seem" today to be the "high point" of 
creation, but may very well just be another "red blood cell" in a greater 
hierarchy that we will never understand. (If I don't have Ham's dander up 
by now....)

In other words, is "human intelligence" (static intellectual patterns) the 
highest point for all time in the evolutionary process, and is it the 
result of a "purposeful" will? My answers are "mu" and "no". How you 
formulate your own answers to this, will be the lens through which you 
"see" a process ontological analogy. If you decide you even need one. So 
for me, that "back then" DQ was manifest exclusively through inorganic 
patterns does not indicate a void, a lack, or any missing element in the 
ways things were. It was as "right" then as it is now. Nothing was "absent" 
because biological, social and intellectual patterns had not yet emerged.

When you say, "on the one hand we have the lower levels forming the 
foundation for the emergence of the higher levels and on the other hand we 
have the activity of dynamic quality from which all subjects and objects 
emerge", I think of these as not alternate hands, but differing roles in a 
process. DQ is, to me, the "energy" that fuels that engine that is the 
emergent MOQ hierarchy. It is with this energy, that individuals (on all 
levels) are able to participate in collective activity, and through which 
collective activity structure the individual, which then drives the 
emergence of higher-order levels.

Does that help?

Arlo