[MD] mystical awareness and intellectual explantions

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Marsha

2 March you quoted:

> At 03:25 AM 3/2/2007, Bo wrote:
> >However the MOQ does not fit this. In it the overall picture
> >belongs to the meta-level above its own static range, and in that
> >picture SOM is intellectual "bogus" out of social "bogus" ...and so
> >on downwards. All static levels are "bogus", only the DQ/SQ dualism
> >is not.

and added:
 
> Sorry to interrupt, but I was wondering about the last sentence in the
> above paragraph.  Do you mean the DQ/sq split is absolute?  

Any time Marsha. Yes, I see the DQ/SQ as absolute. I discussed 
this with Heather who insisted on DQ as the only thing, with SQ 
(in her words) mere metaphors. I used the ocean/wave example 
where the difference between the two is what counts. Water and 
ice may also be an example. SQ is made of the same dynamic 
"stuff", yet it's their static quality that sets them apart from the 
dynamic (amorphous) background.

> Are SPOVs nonchanging?  

The static range has changed from inorganic to intellectual, but 
each level does not change once it is transcended, the Q-
evolution pulls up the ladder behind itself. Pirsig speaks about the 
extreme stability of inorganic patterns, but all levels are stable. 
Instability is only at the (at any time) "leading edge". If for 
instance (forgive my morbidity) all life on earth went extinct, the 
leading edge would move back to  where it once was, namely at 
the inorganic level .... on the earth that is, on a planet elsewhere 
the social level may be where the action is.   

> And what of the DQ/sq split from a nonhuman perspective?

This turns into a MOQ introduction course. Look, the notion that 
everything is from a human-perspective (a subject making up 
theories about an ineffable reality) IS THE VERY SOM, and it 
looks inescapable. There simply is no nonhuman perspective 
...inside SOM.   

Yet, the MOQ is supposed to have replace SOM as the ultimate 
perspective , thus Phaedrus must have seen a way out of the 
closed S/O loop. Where did he find an opening? He found it in 
the Quality concept that refused to let itself be trapped in either 
category and made him up-end reality with the  "Quality the 
creator of both subjects and objects".  

NB) 
Things possibly BEGAN with the Quality concept, not with P. 
speculated about ways to escape the S/O loop, he knew of no 
SOM, but the result is the same.

Everything were turned inside-out: The Quality is not "inside the 
human perspective" (subjective), rather the "human 
perspective/God's Eye perspective" (S/O) is inside Quality's 
realm.

The first fall-out of this realization was that there is a SOM. You 
can scan all philosophy books without finding such a concept 
before Pirsig. The next was the need for a SOM replacement and 
he began to look for the first fundamental split something that 
resulted in the Romantic/Classic proto.moq.

>  Is there a DQ/sq split that is other than an intellectual split?  

I have refrained from Pirsig-bashing till now, but his failure to see 
the obvious, namely that the intellectual level=SOM is the one 
fault that robs the MOQ of all explanatory and other power. The 
term "intellect" seems to have acquired the content of being 
thinking itself, but my dictionary defines it (with a little help) as 
the ability to distinguish between what's subjective and what's 
objective.

So if you accept the above conclusion from ZMM that Quality is 
above, prior to, the origin of ... etc. the "human/non-human" (S/O) 
distinction and - further - that it (the S/O distinction) becomes the 
static value of the 4th. level, then the DQ/SQ split certainly is 
"other than intellectual", the MOQ now has intellect as a static 
level (something that ought to be obvious) not the other way 
round.  

> See, this is what I don't understand?  Are you using your intellect to
> explain what is outside of intellect?

I would say "using my intelligence",  the term "intellect" has by 
now - for me - become the 4th. level and I'm incapable of 
returning to it ... to SOM. 

You may balk: Quality is a mere concept and because language 
is a human phenomenon the MOQ does not escape the human 
perspective, but if so you are still "embedded" in SOM, and sees 
the MOQ as just another (subjective) theory and Quality as the 
(objective) ineffable reality beyond. This is merely a more 
complicated SOM and has zero explanatory power. 

Finally. There are many places in ZMM and LILA where Pirsig 
speaks of Quality being outside any definition or subdivision - 
that the MOQ is just another intellectualization - but this is the 
very source of all problems. 
  
Enough!

     
Bo