[MD] Is this the inadequacy of the MOQ?

[Ham Priday]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Tim <rapsncows at fastmail.fm> wrote to 
Marsha:

[Marsha, previously]:
> Do you have a problem with describing the self, the 'I', as an
> ever-changing, interrelated, impermanent collection of flowing
> inorganic, biological, social and intellectual static patterns of value?
> As opposed to an independent existing, controlling center that
> runs the show?

[Tim]:
> Even if I don't end up 'having a problem' with your description,
> I think I will prefer one that mentions 'choice' and 'will', as I see
> these as the two most vital prerogatives of the 'I'.

[John responds]:
> You nailed it there.  This is something that I've said many times
> but wonder if anybody gets at all (besides Ham).  How can you
> have Quality if there is no choice?

Thank you, gentlemen.  I commend you both for acknowledging this truth.

We can talk about "interrelated patterns" 'til the cows come home, but it 
won't lead to an understanding of the individual's role in existence or the 
morality that mankind seeks.  We can compartmentalize "intellect" and 
"quality" and consider them "agents of evolution".  But when we do so, we 
deny the core sensibility that drives human behavior.  That in itself is 
intellectually immoral, in my opinion.

Metaphysics isn't simply an intellectual tool for "overcoming" subjects and 
objects.  There is a great deal more at stake, most of it vital to the 
life-experience.  The concept I get from this forum is that mankind has 
somehow arrived at "the intellectual level", as if the era of 
intellectuality was "out there" all the time, waiting for us to evolve 
sufficiently to latch onto it.  Justification for this peculiar belief seems 
to be that since intellect is a level of Quality, it has to exist as an 
extra-corporeal realm, together with all the intelligence that we humans are 
(falsely) credited for.

John also expressed some thoughts on this "evolutionary model" of intellect:

> Pirsig himself posits rationality as an art and support for the idea
> that the artistic sense is the highest (closest to DQ) human mentation
> so it should be plainly obvious that unfeeling rationality is not the
> highest of all.  And yet, because we use a hierarchical model for
> evolution with intellect at the top, we get stuck in these conundrums,
> over and over.  Making intellect your highest value forces you
> logically into an intellectualism.  In this regard, the MoQ is inferior
> even to the Academy, which at least has a liberal arts arena and lets
> the two fight it out on somewhat equal terms.  The MoQ, which
> should have been a synthesizer, instead has inadvertently come down
> on the side of intellectualism with it's labeling.  And until that problem
> gets cleared up, I don't think we're going to get anywhere.

At the risk of being repetitious, let me simply add that it is 
"individuality" which enables value to be realized in [as] a differentiated 
world.  And, by virtue of man's innate sensibility and reason, every 
individual is free to act in accordance with his or her proprietary values. 
This makes man the "choicemaker" of his universe, allowing him to exercise 
"free will" as an agent of value limited only by the laws of existential 
reality.  To deny this principle reduces the individual to an automaton 
subject to the vicissitudes of nature and/or the coercion of external 
authority.

Essentially speaking,
Ham