[MD] What is the MOQ?

[skutvik at online.no]

Krim and Moqtalk

You said 

> No, it does not show that there are no monisms. It shows that
> polarities are opposite sides of the same coin. It is a bit like a
> sine wave which is a monism composed of a peak and a valley. Or a
> day which recognized as a cycle of light and darkness. Or a magnetic
> field which is made of plus and minus. Taoism reveals the monisms
> that underlie our binary perceptions.

I'm not completely stupid, but a sine or whatever wave is no wave 
without a peak and a valley like a coin must have a front and a rear 
side, as 'in' is dependent on 'out' and 'up' is on 'down'. Isn't this saying 
that there are nothing without its contrast i.e. no monisms? To see the 
mutual dependency is - well - a great pastime, but it's a "cul d'sac" as 
the French says.  

> [Krimel]
> Then I confess that I have no idea what S/O is. In my reading of
> Pirsig it is a strawman he builds out of the mind/body problem. It
> is a fundamental duality that has many nuances and Pirsig selects
> the version of it that most irritates him and runs with it. 

Is the mind/body dualism suddenly fundamental, not two sides of the 
same coin? OK, I'll not taunt you, the S/O was fundamental before the 
Dynamic/Static and the mind/body one of its many offsprings, 
soul/body the "religious" variety.    

> But my understanding of the mind/body problem is that it is most
> certainly the I/Thou problem. 

Don't be silly, the I/You distinction has been with mankind since the 
social level in moqspeak.

> It is self/other. 

and the self/not self since the biological level. The distinction the 
biological immune system is based on. 

> It is the distinctly different character of my perception and sensation
> of my self versus the wholly other character of external reality. One
> of the great tasks of Buddhist for example is to recognize that "other"
> really is an internal construction and representation. "Other" is in
> fact "self" thus they say that Thou art That to dissolve the
> distinction.

You don't recognize the level arrangement and see all (mind/body,  
self/not self) distinctions as subsets of the I/Thou one and - 
furthermore - claim that Buddhism has resolved it, but if the resolution 
is based on "thou" an internal construction in the respective 
individuals, then the external/internal distinction remains .. which IS a 
S/O subset. It's nice Eastern mysticism  with such resolutions but - as 
said - a dead end.  

> [Krimel]
> I would be happy to accept the conflation of Quality and DQ if it
> where phrased properly. If DQ and SQ are understood as chaos and
> order it actually makes sense. Order is a manifestation of chaos and
> that duality is clearly an illusion. But until that is understood, I
> think it makes more sense to retain SQ and DQ as modifiers or
> separate aspects of Quality just as we divide a day into daytime and
> nighttime.

Pirsig agrees with you that the DQ/SQ (the MOQ) are mere modifiers 
of Quality. That's the very problem IMO, Quality is of course Dynamic 
Quality, the night is no more dynamic than the day or vice versa so 
that metaphor is irrelevant.
 
> As it stands now the MoQ is not commonly understood in this way.
> Most see DQ as mystical or 'betterness'. This is what I regard as a
> major obstacle toward progress.

The MOQ is "commonly understood" as some Western "Buddhism" 
and I guess you are part of that understanding. And this is about all for 
this time. 

Bo