[MD] Quality and Chaos

[Krimel]

[John]
Well I agree with dave completely on this one.  Quality = Chaos seems the
most ridiculous formulation I can imagine.  It is the essence of what I've
termed, the Moronist position - the Metaphysics of Randomness makes as
little sense to me today as when I first heard it.

Shit happens, indeed.  But the fact that it is "shit",  is a matter of
value.  Chaos is  a valueless entity.

[Krimel]
So like Dave you don't get what this means? Chaos is not a state of complete
disorder. It is more like the field of possibility. Order emerges from it.
It is neither orderly nor disorderly. It is both. It is the uncertainty the
surrounds us at all times. It is the problem we are designed to solve.

[John]
Since you share mine and hunter's fondness for the odd apt scriptural quote,

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for
light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for
bitter!
-Isaiah 5:20

[Krimel]
Oh, you mean like this from the Lord of Hosts, the chaotic Yahweh:

"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the
LORD do all these things."
- Isaiah 45:7

Or as if to drive home the point:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD."
- Isaiah 55:8

The Jewish approach to life in a world of chaos is submission to the will of
a chaotic God. We are to draw comfort from the randomness around us because
it is the manifestation of God's will and:

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your
ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
- Isaiah 55:9

While Christian seem to take perverse delight in submission in the lame
confidence that the "God of Love" has something "better" in mind for us; the
Jews were a bit more realistic. There is an old Jewish saying that God lives
in heaven because if he lived on earth his neighbors would break his
windows.











John


> dmb says:
>
> I was trying to be polite, but since you asked twice I'll tell pay it some
> attention.
>
> It seems to me that the whole thing revolves around the notion that
> "Quality is Chaos". If that part of your picture is undermined everything
> else falls with it, more or less. We all know that shit happens. I'll
> certainly go along with you there. But if Quality is not Chaos, and it's
> definitely not, then the whole thing folds like a cheap card table, which
it
> is.
>







> There are many pieces of evidence to choose from but I like the passages
> from the end of his second book, in this case chapter 30:
>
> "One of Phaedrus' old school texts ..contained a good summary: 'RTA, which
> etymologically stands for 'course' originally meant 'cosmic order', the
> maintenance of which was the purpose of all the gods; and later it also
came
> to mean 'right' so that the gods were conceived as preserving the world
not
> merely from physical disorder but also from moral chaos. The one idea is
> implicit in the other; and there is order in the universe because its
> control is in righteous hands.'The physical order of the universe is also
> the moral order of the universe. Rta is both. This is exactly what the MOQ
> was claiming. it was not a new idea. It was the oldest idea known to
> man.This identification of RTA and ARETE was enormously valuable, Phaedrus
> thought, because it provided a huge historical panorama in which the
> fundamental conflict between static and Dynamic Quality had been worked
> out."
>
> "Dharma, like rta, means 'what holds together'. It is the basis of all
> order. It equals righteousness. It is the ethical code. It is the stable
> condition which gives man perfect satisfaction. Dharma is duty. It is not
> external duty which is arbitrarily imposed by others. It is not any
> artificial set of conventions which can be repealed by legislation.
Neither
> is it internal duty which is arbitrarily decided by one's own conscience.
> Dharma is beyond all questions of what is internal and what is external.
> Dharma is Quality itself, the principle of 'rightness' which gives
structure
> and purpose to the evolution of all life and to the evolving understanding
> of the universe which life created."
>
>
> First of all, this strikes me as a very beautiful and very powerful
summary
> of the MOQ. But it the point is to refute the notion that "Quality is
> Chaos". If it Quality itself is "the basis of all order" and "the
principle
> of rightness which gives structure and purpose to all life" then Quality
is
> the exact opposite of chaos. That would mean you were about as wrong as
it's
> possible to be - and this error is about nothing less than the MOQ's
central
> term.
>
> What was that thing you were saying about elephants and gnats? Compared to
> the epic nature of this blunder, elephants would look like gnats. Yep, you
> practically gotta get in hot air balloon if you want to see the whole
thing
> at once. It's visible from space.
>
>
> Just kidding.
>
> But it is pretty bad.
>
>
>
>
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