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

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt]
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. 

[Arlo]
We each provided a quote of him using the word "create". Why is your example
alright, but mine "academic deconstruction"?

I say again, the MOQ is clearly an emergentist theory. He uses the word
"create" in several different ways in LILA, and I think its the storyteller in
him using commonly understood vernacular. Since he uses it very contradictory,
I don't hold any one "quote" as evidence of your Qualigod concept.

Here is the problem with the word "create". If you say "Quality created carbon
atoms", then you leave no choice, no value, no response, to the subatomic
particles. They form carbon because Quality orders them to do so.

At every level in the MOQ, the beauty is that ALL patterns are the result of
smaller patterns responding to DQ. "Carbon atoms" are not "made", they appear
as subatomic patterns exercise value preference. This particular value
preference does not come to them from some mandate, nor is it in any way
related to the existence of "man". 

This passage from LILA (repeated) demonstrates clearly the tenor of the MOQ.
"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)

This "response to DQ" is the foundation of all static patterns. These patterns
are  not "created", they are a "response".

A "carbon atom" is a response of subatomic particles to Dynamic Quality. DQ
does not "create" it, DQ simply is the value-ground in which those particles
are able to exercise this preference. 

You should try deconstructing Pirsig sometimes, Platt, you might actually
understand him.

Ironically, in your "planned and enacted world of Qualigod", there can be no
freedom, no DQ, and that's what's actually funny-sad. If we are "part of the
plan", then there was NO freedom, NO DQ at the "lower levels". They are what
they are because they were made to be so. Sadly, as I said, even the view that
"freedom starts with man" leaves your personal existence an "oops". So really
to overcome THAT, you have to posit that the cosmos was ordered and controlled
to produce YOU. I know how warm and fuzzy that must make you feel...