[MD] What's missing

[skutvik at online.no]

Case and possible interested parties

On 27 Mar. you wrote:

> I understood ZMM as a version of Taoist metaphysics a long time ago. I
> first encountered the Tao in a survey of religions course about a year
> before reading ZMM. I had a long time to stew on it. The Lila levels
> did not arrive for nearly 20 years. I still regard ZMM as the more
> profound work. 

I too regard ZMM the best of Pirsig's works in the "making friends 
and influence people." sense but this is irrelevant regarding the 
MOQ and its levels.   

> Even so, as a novel Lila is structurally Yin and Yang. Dropping the
> first person completely, Pirsig encounters a feminine archetype while
> floating through one of the great fractal geological systems in North
> America. Along the way he discusses a "metaphysics of randomness".
> What's not to like?
 
> In my view the first cut of the Tao into Yin and Yang is a
> metaphysical distinction worthy of G. Spencer Browne. Form and
> formless can be classified on the basis of their active and passive
> Qualities. 
 
I have never understood how Taoism works as a metaphysics, 
except that of Tao being its "groundstuff", but then what? This 
goes for Zen Buddhism too, why I see the MOQ as an East-West 
bridge. Have you read Watts on Buddhism? I did but did not 
understand until I met with Pirsig's ideas.   

> A metaphysics is a bit like Vonnegut described stacking cannon balls
> in Cat's Cradle. The first layer you put down determines the shape of
> the pile.

> The purpose of a metaphysics is to provide a coherent structure for
> integrating sensory input into memory. What we attended to and how we
> apportion value; what to leave in and what to leave out. Your first
> metaphysical cut establishes the fundamental structure of your system
> of thought. 

Elementary, doctor Watson ;-) 

> It just seems to me that everywhere I look I see things in terms of
> what it moving and what is still, background and foreground, sunlight
> and shade; what is the same and what is different.

This is the biological level's "sense value", the second stage of 
the value hierarchy.     

> I see opposites converging and merging into awareness. Dynamic quality
> is motion and change. Static Quality is what survives in its wake. 

Amen! 

> Beyond this any system of you try to impose degenerates quickly into
> legalism. 

"Legalism"? Laws?

> "Thus it was that when the Tao was lost, 

Wen pure DQ was lost.

> Its attributes appeared; 

the inorganic world appeared.

> When its attributes were lost,

when the first level was transcended
 
> Benevolence appeared; 

the social level emerged

> When benevolence was lost, 

...ditto

> The proprieties appeared.

Reason (intellect) appeared.

(it only lacks the biological level)

 
> Now propriety is the attenuated form 
> of legal-heartedness and good faith, 
> and is also the commencement of disorder; 
> swift apprehension is (only) a flower of the Tao, 
> and is the beginning of stupidity.
> -Lao Tsu

> I think all the bickering over the levels reduces them to frills on a
> headboat. The lesson I took from Lila was; this is "how" the MoQ can
> be used, not this is how it "must" be used.

Well, you are not the type to be told anything, but to me the level 
lay-out is a fantastic tool that explains - well - everything. For 
instance what we "bickering" about, namely intellect's impact on 
the social level through the Jesus figure, but you turned a deaf 
ear. And when the same thing manifests through the Islam vs 
West you (all) scoff at that. However, for me, the real gem of 
explanation is the intellect=SOM, but THIS even the "moqists" 
scoff at. Well, no wonder when you refuse to see through the 
MOQ telescope - and (almost) all refuse to see through my 
refined "Hubble" type.     

> This is not a widely held view I suppose and I do actively discuss the
> levels at times. After all the system Pirsig used obviously has value.
> But I do not think MoQ rests on it's levels so much as it needs to be
> wrested from them.

Still I regard the level system its heart and soul. Without it what 
have we? Even Taoism has to name some "levels" when its  
purity were "lost"

IMO

Bo