[MD] emergence and MOQ

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ron]
I'm drawn to the idea of the responsibility falling on my shoulders 
in my 3lb version of the universe. I don't dis the intelligent design 
side, but it seems like we are projecting ourselves on the universe..

[Arlo]
Yes, I'm sure we are. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad 
thing, as long as we remain aware that we are doing so. These "myths" 
we create are very powerful tools, and in many ways point to an 
understanding of ourselves and the cosmos that is not possible in 
"literal" language. I liken them to "art", paintings that reveal 
insights typically hidden to us. But no one says "that painting is 
right, and that painting is wrong" as they do with myth-stories. What 
people say is "that painting reveals so and so about the human 
condition, and this painting reveals such and such" (ignore the use 
of deterministic language, its just rhetorical to make a point).

People want meaning as to why they exist, and many people appear 
convinced that that meaning must come from some external, or 
separate, entity or force. I believe that this has been the fault of 
organized religion, of power structures that garner power by 
externalizing this meaning and then demanding some subjugation to 
this authority. Myth should be a doorway to inner-understanding, in 
the Gnostic tradition for example, where we see that the myths we 
deploy are simply "art" that reveals the unspeakable, and not facts 
that demand obedience and loyalty.

This projecting ourselves, I think, is a key problem in defining 
"Quality". We humanize it, make it some external consciousness that 
planned this whole thing out, and then enacted a very specific plan 
with us as a very particular goal. "Quality" simply becomes a 
thinly-veiled replacement term for literal translations of "God", 
rather than "God" being a mythological attempt over human history to 
understand "Quality".

As a friend of mine used to say, "we've flipped the iceberg". Instead 
of starting with Quality, and seeing these myths as metaphorical 
analogies in an attempt to describe the indescribable, we start with 
the literal "God" and then ascribe the same human traits onto Quality 
(intent, design, planning, goals, etc.). Quality then gets crushed 
under the weight of this enormous misunderstanding.