[MD] Wanted: A proper foundation

[Ham Priday]

Dear Marsha --


Ham said to Bo:
> I find it curious that you (i.e., Pirsig) exhort "instability", while the 
> rest of mankind is desperately looking for a way to make the world more 
> stable -- scientifically, socially, economically, internationally, 
> militarily.  Isn't this going against the central premise that "the 
> dynamic 'dislike' of biological stability" is what inexorably moves the 
> world to "betterness"?  If so, how do you market the philosophy of dynamic 
> instability to a world torn by instability?  Should you even try?

Marsha comments:
> The rest of the world?  You do not know what the rest of the world is 
> desperate for.  Those with power would like to scientifically, 
> economically, internationally, militarily stabilize events to enhance 
> their power.  Most of the humans in the world would like food to feed 
> their families and a decent job or livelihood to provide the means to do 
> so.

Of course they do.  But do you suppose an unstable world where tribal 
warriors kill their neighbors in the name of Allah, atheists ridicule 
believers in the name of science, and deficit spending is encouraged for the 
"common good" helps feed starving people or makes their lives more secure? 
Shouldn't the efforts of the intelligentsia be directed toward stabilizing 
the world rather than preaching the dominance of  intellect over society in 
the name of "dynamic quality"?

> Equating 'dynamic' and 'instability' get you nothing but accused of using 
> linguistic tricks.

True, as you have just demonstrated, but such accusations also serve to 
distract the accuser from having to deal with the point of my argument. 
"Dynamic" signifies active, changing, variable, as opposed to "static" which 
is a state of equilibrium characterized by the absence of change or 
movement.  Clearly thinking, experiencing, and creating are dynamic 
activities, as is everything in the objective world.  Why is calling such 
processes static not a "linguistic trick"?  On the other hand, there is 
nothing about an uncreated, independent and immutable source that suggests 
"dynamic", whether it is "pure Quality" or absolute Essence.

> Please offer an example of a finite construct.  Seems to me they change, 
> they at least have a coming and going.  Show me this uncreated, 
> independent immutable Essence.  Or does it only exist in your mind?  And 
> you cannot use the authority of Philosophy to say it is so, unless 
> Philosophy is like Monopoly.  And that's okay.  Games are fun.

A thing-in-itself is a finite construct, as are all objects of experience. 
Yes, they all "come and go" because they depend on our conscious awareness 
for their being.  And, as I said above, experience and intellection are 
processes that occur over time.  The time dimension is built into 
experience; it's the way we perceive things.  That we regard it as an 
inherent principle of the physical world is a consequence of our reflection 
(in time) which, like experience itself, is a reductive process and subject 
to its limitations.

I can't "show you" Essence because it is not accessible to human beings.  No 
creature can "know" Essence because creatures are not essential.  All we can 
directly know (sense) is the Value of Essence.  Value is essential to our 
reality as beings-aware.  As an artist, you don't have to be told what value 
is because you sense it daily.  But you "know" it in terms of the constructs 
of your experiential reality.  Thus, the values you feel and talk about are 
always relative to specific phenomena -- the beingness (things and events) 
that you bring into the world through experience.

> Understanding that time is also a pattern, and change 'uncreated source' 
> to DQ and I think we're set to go.

I can accept "pattern" as your label for a phenomenon, provided you 
understand that we derive the precept of time from the experience of change 
and the sequence of events.  And experience is a dynamic phenomenon, not 
static.

[Ham, previously]:
> What Kant (and the existentialists) failed to understand is that there is 
> no "in" or "out", and that what they called the "world-in-itself" is 
> actually the experiential world that each self actualizes.

[Marsha]:
> Then Kant was not right.  One from column A and two from column B.  Is 
> that one of rules for playing Essence?

No, that's Marsha being persnickety.

Best wishes for the new year,
Ham