[MD] Betterness - 4 levels of!

[Ham Priday]

Hey, Mark --


> This notion of image is indeed intriguing if one looks at it in a sense
> other than one of anthropomorphic grandiosity.  If such an image does
> not exist, then we must assume that what we are is a result of what
> happened from the ground up, and such continued happening has
> infinite possibilities in the future.  That is, uninfrangible evolution as
> dictated by molecular chance.  (I guess unifrangible is not a word,
> Google doesn't like it, but hopefully you know what I mean, I don't
> feel like thinking of a synonym.).
>
> Now, we can provide some kind of hindsight rules on this evolution.
> We can present the basics of molecular self-assembly (also an
> interesting theistic topic), which provides some kind of guiding force.
> We also can conceive, as presented by Darwin, that there is a
> Selection Process which is outside and directing evolution.  (This
> selection process also receives little attention, and can have theistic
> interpretations).

No, you'll have to explain "uninfrangible" to me; but never mind.  "Survival 
of the fittest" is the concept on which I suspect Pirsig built his "Quality 
moves to betterness" thesis.  And, yes, it does lead us to a "universal 
self-assembly" ontogeny in which what works survives, while what does not 
dies out.  It also lead us to the famous Watchmaker analogy in which 
creation occurs at the first moment of time and unwinds automatically 
throughout all history.  This paradigm is unacceptable to me.  Creation is 
not a singular happening in time but a continuous, ongoing process that 
involves every event perceived and every observing subject.

> To not reiterate what I spent some time on before, let us say
> that the force of natural selection, that we can term environmental
> pressures, is met at a boundary by the expression of species.
> This expression can be considered physical or intellectual or even
> spiritual.   However such expression cannot go beyond what is
> accepted by the environment.  If you get too big or if your horns
> are too heavy you won't survive.  If you are of intensely high
> intellect (as with some autism), you cannot communicate and
> without support your lineage will die out.  In this way we can see
> the environmental pressures or selection process as being a limit
> to expression from all sides and angles.  As such, these boundaries
> could be considered the mold for species and intellect as it exists
> right now.  This would be the use of mold in the same way it is
> used to make a bronze statue.  The contour of such a mold has
> a positive image or a negative image side.  If we consider
> ourselves the positive image, then the other is the negative image.
>
> In the presentation above, one could indeed say that man is an
> image of something.  Such a concept requires the active separation
> of both, which is not my intuitive conclusion.  But in the world of
> subjects and objects, the man in the image of God, is certainly one
> which can be rationally described as existing.

Certainly, as a product of the uncreated Source, we are constituted of its 
essential attributes, Sensibility and Freedom being the most significant.  I 
suppose you could say that man is created in the "mold" of God's essence. 
As far as a "negative image" is concerned, I don't see how that factors into 
your paradigm.  Man is a negation -- a 'zero' -- from the git-go.  The 
"boundaries" that you speak of in terms of a "mold" are the limits of man's 
finite beingness.  Everything that he experiences (i.e., negates) represents 
a sensible value added to his nothingness.  In the final analysis, his 
being-in-the-world is entirely consumed by the value which replaces it. 
This "secondary negation", the active process of experience, cancels the 
former and restores the negate to its "value-quotient" in Essence.

That's the way I see it, Mark.  But this ontogeny needs further elaboration 
which I shall get to in due time.

Until then, may the Force be with you,
Ham