[MD] inorganic patterns & thinking

[MarshaV]

On Jul 19, 2010, at 10:01 AM, Magnus Berg wrote:

> On 2010-07-19 14:13, MarshaV wrote:
>>> Hello again,
>>> 
>>> First, thank you for the seriousness of this exchange.
> 
> Likewise.
> 
>>> For me the MoQ is Quality(unpatterned experience/patterned
>>> experience), all else is speculation.  What you "know" is bits and
>>> pieces of ever-changing, interrelated, impermanent pattern, and I
>>> think it arrogant to call that real.  Call it the most useful and
>>> best workable hypothesis available at the moment, but not real.
> 
> I think you're forgetting something regarding "experience". Experience
> is not just about you, it requires something on the other end of the
> experience as well.

Do you think so?  I don't think it always to be so.   There are static 
patterned experiences AND unpatterned experiences.  


> This is usually used the other way around, to
> indicate that a tree might *not* fall in the forest if nobody is there
> to hear or see it. However, it's just as valid if we turn it around. For
> you to have an experience, it requires both an experiencer and something
> to experience. This is the subject and object side of the Quality event.
> This isn't speculation. The way you use the word "experience", it seems
> as if you just acknowledge the subjective side of it, but that's just
> half of the experience, half of quality, and half of reality.

You do not need to acknowledge anything: neither the subjective nor the objective.


> Regarding the "most useful hypothesis" you mentioned. I think the MoQ
> levels are quite useful here as well. As I replied to Ham yesterday, some
> are often afraid to take anything for granted nowadays, and that is because
> SOM doesn't acknowledge anything but the lowest possible explanation to
> be really real. It doesn't acknowledge that taste is real, because taste is just
> a biological process built using inorganic ones.

Nothing wrong with direct tasteful experiences.  I won't deny them.   


> And then gravity is next, gravity isn't real anymore because there is some
> underlying process that explains how it works. So, in fear of believing in
> something that might get jerked away, people stop believing in anything.
> The only thing that people *can* believe in is experiences that science is
> quite incapable of explaining, like why a work of art is beautiful, or why you
> like a song. So that becomes the only things that people can say: "This is my
> reality. Neither you nor anyone else can take that away from me by explaining
> that it's just chemistry, or magnetism, or entropy, or whatever."

Conventionally useful and workable patterns are good, and some offer more 
beauty and harmony than others.    


> 
> But the levels of the MoQ *are* exactly such stepping stones that we *can*
> believe in. We can claim without having to ever take it back, that the taste of
> the freshly brewed coffee in my cup is real, that gravity keeps my feet to the
> ground, etc.

For me the levels offer a hierarchical, evolutionary criteria on which to consider 
moral questions.   Why do you need to believe in a cup of coffee?  If a cup of 
coffee is there, taste it.  If you trip, pick yourself up.  

Did I somewhere state that your sister has a mustache or wore army boots?  


> 
>> I am of the mind that all patterns have a relationship with thinking
>> and that is the cause of the self/object split.
> 
> I disagree. The self/object split is, as I said above, a direct result of the
> experience, the Quality event. Thinking is just how we got it into our heads
> and are able to foresee the future of the experienced object.

I'm still considering this, but I don't see any reason that there is self or
object inherent in a pattern, that's why it may be the relationship with 
thinking that causes the split.   I'm investigating.  Kind of like chasing 
ones tail.   


> 
>> But in the fourth
>> level it has become formalized and can do the most damage by its
>> emphasis an objective, thing-in-itself world and "real" knowledge.
> 
> And what damage is that exactly? That things you believe in can be taken away?

For all the advanced technological and scientific knowledge the world is a mess 
with too much ugliness, and without any abatement of greed, and without much 
relief from suffering.  imho  


> 
> This will probably sound religious, but:
> 
> Have faith in reality

I don't see why I need to consider faith in reality when there is the unfolding of 
experience.   I try to do my best.  


Marsha