[MD] Oneness, Dualism & Intellect

[Mati Palm-Leis]

Hi to all, 
I have been reading a number postings and wondering where to jump in. This
all seems like fertile ground for a number of issues that do seem to have an
interrelationship.  

Where to start?

Well I think I will start with metaphysics and the issue of oneness. Pirsig
writes in Lila, 
	"Quality doesn't have to be defined.  You understand it without
definition, ahead of definition.  Quality doesn't have to be defined.
Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual
abstractions. 
	Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense
there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these
things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable, and knowable. or there
isn't any metaphysics. (p.113)"

Quality as the taproot of reality.  It is what it is. Undefined it is
experience.  But as we all do we search for understanding beyond experience,
and in some ways it deepens or creates a deeper experience. Pirsig then goes
into a "value" focus in understanding reality, however this really doesn't
get us very far. Just to say quality and values are the same thing and that
everything that exists has value is a truth which doesn't say much.  But
wait..

Pirsig goes on, "In any hierarchy of metaphysical classification the most
important division is the first one, for this division dominates everything
beneath it.(p.123) 

He then decides where to make the first cut of reality.  He chooses the
DQ/SQ split. Without this split MOQ would mean nothing. Then he goes a step
further and provides classifications for the values systems and emphasizes
the DQ evolutionary mechanism that propels it forward and the SQ values to
sustain it.

Now the intellect issue. One of the most prominent issue is the formal
definition of defining the intellect and social level.  I think Pirsig has
given us enough to delineate the social levels from those values that
function under it, but the intellectual values and defining the static
patterns has been up for grabs. Pirsig in his letter Paul, give some
direction but I humbly suggest it creates more questions and issues than
concrete answers.  Pirsig himself has suggested that this is unnecessary
requirement for understanding intellect as he has commented, "It is a horse,
riding a horse." I beg to differ. If there is to be a legitimate basis for
MOQ as a metaphysical construct, I see the key factor lays in our ability to
define it. If it can't be defined, it can't be understood, and if it can't
be understood you might as well toss it out of the window into the wind.

I have over the past years have conversed with Bodvar on the SOL idea.
Frankly, I see it as the best one yet.  This didn't happen overnight and I
must say, given our heavily SOM leaden thinking patterns it is really takes
some real effort to understand the value of such a simple idea. The problem
is that we wish to understand intellect in such away that does not allow us
to see intellect for what it is.  What I mean by this is that we, many
times, see intellect as the whole DQ/SQ notion and ask that SOL to provide a
definition that includes both the Dynamic and Static qualities of intellect.
SOL only deals with, (Bodvar will correct me if I am wrong), with the static
patterns only. If any body else has a better definition of the static
patterns of intellect, I am all eager to listen. 

As to the issue of MOQ and intellect, it had taken again great effort, but I
believe Bodvar is right that MOQ is not a form of intellect other than to
say it was born from intellect but in its own right leaves SOM in the dust.
A fifth level? Not yet because there is a belief that intellectual type
thinking is intellect and MOQ is a high form of intellectual thinking. It
isn't till the world understands this and then embraces MOQ capacity for
understand the world around us. 

If you want a metaphysical understanding of Reality that does not delineate
itself then you really aren't interested in metaphysics but reality itself.
If so I humbly suggest a beautiful sunset, snow falling gently to earth, or
a smile of child. 

Mati

P.S. It has been 20 plus years since I took the MBTI but I scored INFP. I
suspect that it is a very static pattern that would still hold true today.