[MD] MOQ Recursion

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Mary,

Mary said:
Ok, but levels and POVs will never make any sense in terms of SOM, 
which is what all of you are looking for, I guess.
...
And I was impressed with the good job you did of describing the 
inadequacy. How can you have an inadequate understanding of that 
which you so adequately described?  What did you see yourself 
describing instead?
...
No, I'm saying SOM cannot adequately describe the levels since, for 
one thing but not the only thing, it sees them as buckets.

Matt:
Ok.  I think the "I guess" captures best the level of mutual 
understanding.  After I described what I thought _your_ sense 
inadequacy looked like, and you affirmed it as correct, the next step 
would have been to engage the bit where I tried to make that sense 
of inadequacy look quaint and inadequate.  But you used it in a way 
that made _me_ look like I was affirming that sense.  The reason I 
can have an "inadequate understanding of that which I so adequatedly 
describe" is because a conversation conducted under mutual 
understanding requires each person to be able to adequately describe 
the other's viewpoint--thus attaining a "we are on the same page" 
(this is a position I've never reached, for example, with Mr. 
Buchanan)--but it doesn't mean you have to _affirm_ the viewpoint 
(this is what confuses Bo: he doesn't understand how I can state his 
viewpoint correctly and deny it).

To engage the bit where I don't see "intellect as inadequate" would 
be, I think, to extrapolate on your claim that Arlo or me or someone 
else is "describing in terms of SOM."  You guess that's what we are 
looking for, but that's not how we see ourselves.  So when you state 
"No, I'm saying SOM cannot adequately describe the levels," some 
of us just scratch our heads, because we didn't think we were 
saying that it could.

I don't have a clear view of your viewpoint.  Maybe that's partly 
because I'm not following closely all of the conversations.  But my 
comments have aimed at trying to elicit further explication of your 
viewpoint.  Perhaps I'm too far removed from the winds of 
conversation or the nexuses of power and authority for that to be 
worth it, but it strikes me that--given the heat surrounding certain 
viewpoints recently--a good strategy would be to step back from the 
engaged fight and write out a mission statement, a systematic 
position statement of one's viewpoint.  It would help me, and I think 
it would help others who really do care about arguing with/against a 
position they are getting right (rather than just futzing about in the 
mud and mist).  Marsha has her thesis down to two pithy statements.  
That's a great first step.  I wish she didn't see it as the only step she 
needs, but I am urging something like that precision of response: a 
Pirsigian catachism of Quality.

Matt