[MD] [MD} The relativity of the MoQ

[Ham Priday]

Ron, Marsha, Steve, and All --


Ron asks:

> Why choose one pattern over another?
> Why does one pattern have more meaning than another?

Marsha wonders:

> Why would one pattern be chosen over another?  ...
> Even the notion that there is an 'I' doing the choosing
> is a pattern.  No truth there either...

Steve muses:

> Pragmatists can only say something as vague as:
> Better in the sense of containing more of what is good
> and less of what is bad. When asked, 'And exactly what
> do you consider good?', pragmatists can only say with
> Whitman 'variety and freedom,' or with Dewey, 'growth.'

It is certainly true that existence is relative.  And since normal people 
accept the fact that existence is divided up into finite objects by 
cognizant subjects, the part of the MoQ that has been misnamed "SOM" must 
also be relative.  But that's not where relativity stops.

What is "good" is what is valued in the subject's experience.  This goodness 
can be defined in three ways: 1) what feels good, 2) what works well, and 3) 
what makes sense insofar as the subject apprehends it.  While 1 and 3 are 
relative to the subject; 2 is utilitarian value which relates to mankind 
universally.  In other words, Value is relative to the observer.

Now, each of us has a set of values that affects our worldviews differently. 
Steve and Ron may spot a demure young woman standing on the sidewalk, while 
Marsha is attracted to a Picasso painting displayed in the shop window 
beyond.  Will and Marsha may look for poetry to please their senses, while 
Platt is drawn to the beauty of a sunset, I to a Mendelssohn string quartet, 
and so on.  We each see the world through glasses of a different valuistic 
hue.  Yet, objectively, the world is the same for all of us.

There has to be difference so that our individual perspectives can be 
different.  (That's why Collectivism doesn't work in philosophy or 
economics.  Vive la Différence!)  Difference starts with the separation of 
sensible awareness from what Cusanus called "the Not-other" to create the 
appearance of  "otherness".  It is that appearance which we call our 
existence.  We view (i.e., experience) the world as pleasurable, beautiful, 
moral, evil, or hopeless, depending on our value-sensibility.  It is 
universal and personal at the same time, because we are Nature's beings as 
well as individuated selves.  Essentially, however, we are no more than the 
values we seek to reclaim from the undivided Source.  To put it another way, 
we are the created, value-receptive "other" side of the uncreated Not-other.

I've never described my epistemology in just that way before.  The idea came 
to me while researching collectivist ideology as the bane of a secular 
culture.  I hope it can shed some light on your ruminations.

Essentially yours,
Ham