[MD] MOQ and the Future: An Inquiry into Usefulness

[plattholden at gmail.com]

If you want to put words in Pirsig's mouth or claim he doesn't really 
mean what he says, have at it. But, most people outside of the insular 
world of academia don't try to deconstruct an author's text. Nor do they 
make up stories about what an author says or thinks.   

On 13 Nov 2009 at 16:29, Arlo Bensinger wrote:

> [Platt]
> "Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world 
> in which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of 
> order, preserve our world." (Lila, 9)
> 
> [Arlo]
> Pirsig uses the word "create" very loosely, and contradictory, in 
> LILA. He certainly does not mean it to imply a Supra-Intelligence 
> that sits and orders and builds some according to some pre-conceived "plan".
> 
> For example, Pirsig also uses the word "create" here. "When inorganic 
> patterns of reality create life the Metaphysics of Quality postulates 
> that they've done so because it's "better" and that this definition 
> of "betterness" -this beginning response to Dynamic Quality-is an 
> elementary unit of ethics upon which all right and wrong can be based." (LILA)
> 
> Apparently "inorganic patterns of reality" create "life". Right? So 
> is it DQ or "inorganic patterns of value" that "create"? Both?
> 
> DQ is a "historic evolutionary process" (LILA), which puts it as an 
> AHA! metaphysics, one that preserves the freedom within the levels 
> (DQ) and posits that the patterns we see as "the world" are simply 
> the "value preferences" of patterns at many different levels of complexity.
> 
> If you read this sentence again, you'll see a clearer understanding 
> of how "responses to Quality" when interwoven and summed create the 
> world. There is no "intent", no "desire" among quarks to make a 
> cosmos "recognizable" by humans. They simply repsond to DQ. And as 
> complexity in patterns emerge, from static latching, the universe 
> unfolds, or emerges. Nothing "created" it. It is the result and 
> response to Quality.
> 
> Of course, in your Qualigod view there IS a plan, everything was 
> planned out to happen just so. This completely denies DQ at all 
> levels, until one makes the exception for "man". Sadly, even this 
> would lead "Platt's existence" as an "oops". Until you addend it so 
> that Qualigod ordered and controlled everything up to YOU. Then gave 
> YOU free will. Because if you were "planned" in any way, there could 
> have been no free will. No DQ. There is simply a mechanistic cosmos 
> built and ordered by Qualigod. Just for you. How lovely.
> 
> So again, Platt, these quarks that value their attractions so that 
> the cosmos is recognizable by "man", did they all get together and 
> make this decision? Or were they ordered to do so by Qualigod?