[MD] The Dynamics of Value

[118]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 10:51 AM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
>
>> [Mark]
>> Yes, I think I understand the concept of codependent arising.  If two
>> things arise together, before that was there unity, or nothingness?
>>
>
>
> John:  Aha.  Either you don't understand codependent arising, or I don't.
> Because in my view it is isolated "before-ness" which is empty of meaning.
> There is no "before" the codependent arising of consciousness/valuation
> because "before" is a value created by a consciousness.  See?  You're
> absolutizing a relativistic concept by saying such a thing.  Reifying, as
> Marsha or Nagarjuna would, I believe, point out.

[Mark]
Perhaps my view is different, but I don't think so.  I would have to
understand what you mean by consciousness.  Was there something before
you were born?  Or was everything created in your birth?  Did your
parents have consciousness before you were born?  How about their
parents?  So, at what point were things created?  Is what you mean by
before a consciousness, the human kind?  So there was not value before
the homo-sapiens.  Can we go back to the bacteria in terms of Value.
I am not sure at what point this consciousness came about, so I am not
sure what you mean by before.  Does it have to have DNA?  This
before-ness was empty of meaning, but when did meaning come in?  Was
it a divine spark of some kind.  This reminds me of what cosmologist
say about the big bang when asked what happened before.  They say that
nothing could have happened before, because time was created with the
big bang.  Well, I could say that time was created by three witches
sitting around a large black pot, but I guess I wouldn't have all the
math to convince people of that.

Absolutizing?  I can ask about that as well.  I think this whole
reifying thing is a big smoke screen.  That things exist either
reified or not-reified, what is that all about?  If Nararjuna was
serious about nonreification, he wouldn't have bothered to write about
it.  Any time a codex is created, that must be a reification.  So we
have reification about the not reified, how does that happen?  Perhaps
Nagarjuna should have chosen a different media to transmit his
non-reification.  I am not sure what he would have chosen, since even
music is a reification of sounds.  Perhaps painting, so long as nobody
looks at it.  Maybe just a set of nonsense characters
hgionsobmmerjipp.  I was going to write a book about the not reified,
I will call it "Monkey at a Typewriter".  Just don't try to reify it.
The notion that somehow our thoughts are separate from Real reality,
or dynamic reality is really a bunch of nonsensical logic.  When did
this separation happen.  If thought are transmitted by nerves
(thoughts can be evoked with electrodes).  Then are these nerves
already reified, or are they part of dynamic quality?  There is no
such thing as the reified and the not reified, it is a false division.
 We are either present or we are not.  When present we live in the
same place as the atom, or squirrel does.  The mind reifies indeed!
What does that mean, are we some kind of divine thing that separates
us from the rest?
>
> Mark:
>
>
>
>> Either way, they are both unity.  So one thing rises into two which
>> support each other.  This is only true of one is looking for
>> beginning, or underlying nature of underlying nature.  So, the
>> dynamics of the yin and yang can be seen for what it is, or one can
>> ask how or why.  Both are questions that imply a creative process.
>> Sure, one can stop at codependent arising and say that this is enough
>> depth.
>> >
>>
>
> John:
>
> I guess I'm saying more than it's merely "enough".  I'm also saying it's
> impossible to go any deeper than that.

[Mark]
Well, I suppose we have a difference of opinion of what we are
actually doing.  Going deeper seems to imply that we are looking for
some truth.  It is my understanding that all of our dialogue and
knowledge is a creation, so by depth I really mean breadth (my
syntactical mistake).  By this view, we can never create enough.
There is no limit to that, and it is not impossible to do so.  When we
hit limits, we just are not being creative enough.  We are not digging
down to a foundation of any kind, we are building up.  So, if we are
looking for truth, then I would agree that you will never find it.
This is the switch from Truth to Quality that Pirsig talks about.
Creating, not finding.
>
>
>>
>>
>> [Mark]
>> My understanding of Emptiness is the emptiness of inherent existence.
>> That is that there is no inherent existence, only existence arising
>> out of other things.  Therefore, what we think of as the "I" does not
>> exist except for relationally.  I think this is what you say.  So, I
>> can ask, "what does that mean beyond the words?"
>
>
> John:  Yes, you grasp what I mean.  But in going "beyond the words" you go
> too far for me.  When I say it's language all the way down, I also mean it's
> language as far down as I can go, and I can't go any deeper than that.
> Mystical apprehensions of non-linguistic reality are all fine and good and I
> heartily applaud those who seek such.  But I live in the world of words and
> meanings and I see nothing wrong with that.  It's probably a tad simplistic,
> but there ya go.  That's me, all over.

[Mark]
OK Pooh Bear.
>
[Some snips because you make good points on my mistakes that I cannot refute]

[Mark before]
> We rationally think that for there to be
>> interdependence something must have caused it.
>
>
> John:  And there's our trouble, imo.  Or more accurately, a trouble in the
> roots of rationality itself.  There is no causation independent of
> consciousness.  Causation is just an aspect or tool of consciousness.  And
> the codependency we are discussing, is consciousness/value.  Ham's point
> about there being a necessity of consciousness for valuation to exist?  I
> agree.  However, I also would point out to him (and all who think like him)
> that consciousness only exists in the light of valuation.  Without
> discriminatory awareness, there is no such thing as being.  See?  That's
> codependent arising.

[Mark]
Here I would say that Value creates consciousness.  But I guess if it
is co-dependent, then they both created each other.  I am familiar
with the yin and yang, but what is that circle around it?  What is its
opposite?  Does the Yin Yang have a co-creator.  If so, what is it.
In Taoism we learn that one creates the two, which creates the three,
which creates all things.  I guess in your metaphysics we need to
start with two.  So we are always living in a dualistic world.  Of
course, many philosophies propose this, so who am I to say that we
should not create any more possibilities?
>
[Some snips so you don't get bored]
>> > Mark:
>> >
>> > My present approach is to convey the upending of Truth with Quality,
>> >> which is what lead Pirsig to his complete dissociation from reality,
>> >> and, which he came back to relate in ZMM.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > John:
>> >
>> > Do you think dissociation from reality is a good thing Mark?  I would
>> hope
>> > that any belief system or teaching would get us into closer relationship
>> > with reality.
>>
>> [Mark]
>> Of course dissociation from reality is not a good thing.  I do not
>> think that Pirsig (as Phaedrus) had any intention of going to the
>> hospital for shock treatment.  However, I guess that his estrangement
>> was severe enough.  We all like to have meaning and purpose.  Some of
>> us have minor mid-life crises, like Camus talks about in the Myth of
>> Sisyphus.  The question is:  What was it that Pirsig saw that stripped
>> him of all meaning?  Obviously something grew out of a chance comment
>> in an English department, but how did it radically change the concept
>> of meaning?  This is what I thought about for the first ten years
>> after I read the book.  I have been close, but never have fully had
>> the floor taken out from under me.  What in your opinion did he see?
>>
>
>
> John:  My take on it, coming from an intensely personal place of my own,
> came to me in a realization last night.  It was the realization that there
> is a very prominent part of me that sometimes just wants to sit in the
> corner, smoke and think and ignore the social consequences of my urine and
> my feces.  That I want to be free from social constraints.  That I want to
> ignore the demands of social life in the interest of the pursuits of my
> intellectual life.  It's a childish rebelliousness perhaps, and not to
> indulged if I want to avoid being hauled off to the funny farm, but it's
> there and I must deal with it.
>
[Mark]
Yes, but with Pirsig I believe we are speaking of a complete loss of
meaning that was difficult to come back from.  This must have either
been some kind of insight, or else it was just a run of the mill break
down.  I think that ZMM creates the possibility that it was insight.
Quality above Truth.  What does that mean to you?

> Mark:
>
>
>> I have been trying to explain it, but I am no author.  This is the
>> crux of MoQ, much more than all the levels and comparisons to other
>> philosophers, or even the need to invoke the sophists as a way of
>> explaining it.  Those are all just analogies for a completely
>> different view.
>>
>
> John:  Hmmm... "author".  What is an author?  Is that the same root meaning
> as "authority"?  Just as genius contains the roots of originater - genesis,
> so does author seem to convey the act of expressing what is uniquely from
> within.  I can say "I'm no author", just like Matt says "I'm no
> philosopher".  But he plainly is, and I plainly am and to deny this would be
> a lie.
>
[John]
> I'm not an author or philosopher worthy of any social affirmation or
> respect, but just in my own little world, I am.  And that "I am" is enough
> for me.  I guess if it's not enough for Dan, for one instance,  he can just,
> as he says, "fuck off".  But if I got anything from the MoQ or Pirisig's
> writings, it is this courage to be.  Regardless of whether or not they come
> to take me away.  That's what I take from the tale of "The Quality, which he
> never betrayed, came to him at last"

[Mark]
I like that, the courage to be.  Perhaps it was his wife who insisted
on the shock therapy.  Perhaps he had obligations he had to get back
to.  Perhaps we need meaning in our lives to survive.  At the end of
ZMM he claims that Phaedrus does come back, but this sure does not
come out in Lila, which expounds on too many truths.  And now we sit
around arguing about James and the others, as if that matters.
Phaedrus threw them under the bus.
>
>

>> [Mark]
>> I am not sure if I am bouncing.  There has been much discussion on the
>> subjective nature of Quality, such as "Quality is experience".  This
>> is not the only way to see it.
>
>
> John:
>
> Right.  I for one, do not.  Quality drives experience, but experience is
> all-subjective in the end.  I'm not a big fan of the formulations of radical
> empiricism and see that whole "pure experience" thing as nothing but an
> intellectual dead-end.  Trying to carve out a tiny slice of time as
> metaphysically significant seems to my perception to be nothing but barking
> up the wrong tree.

[Mark]
OK, fair enough.  You prefer the subjective interpretation of
experience.  What if by chance, experience were objective, and we were
part of it?  I agree with you on the pure experience stuff, what do
they think we are having at this very moment, impure experience?  (I
guess it would depend on where one's morals are and what delicious act
one was committing.)  No, this is all pure experience, it is all
mystical experience, there is not other which is more real.  Now,
metaphysically significant, I am not sure what that means.  Would this
be as opposed to metaphysically insignificant?  It all comes down to
whether ones approach has meaning or not.  Some find meaning in a
random finite life, other's don't, it is not my call.
>

> Mark:
>
>
>>  The insights of MoQ can unify the
>> split by making it completely objective.  This is what Buddhism does,
>> by claiming that the subjective does not exist.
>
>
> John:
>
> Whoa, good buddy.  They certainly don't obviate the subjective by making
> objectivity supreme.  Here's a fine example as any for the need of a
> codependency explanation.  You can't have either objects or subjects alone
> and independent of the other.  All experience is the entanglement between.

[Mark]
You can drop the reigns, I am saying that the codependent arising is a
fallacy.  My humble apologies to Gautama.  It is not a natural way of
thinking, so rhetorically it does not pass the mustard (seed).  The
subjects and objects are not independent of each other, they are both
objects.  While entanglement is enticing, and I may return to it at
some point, it is overused and meaningless at this point.
>
> Mark:
>
>
>
>> In our self-centered
>> Western world, we have no idea how this purely objective view can
>> exist.  So the unification is possible by removing the subjective
>> completely, kill all patterns as it were.  Not literally of course,
>> but metaphorically.  A metaphor to remove metaphors, kind of like a
>> computer virus that wipes your hard drive.
>>
>
> John:
>
> Ewww!  I hate it when that happens.  Even though it never has.  Fortunately
> for us mac users, most virus writers focus their energies on the MS world.

[Mark]
Yea!  I have been a Mac User since about 1987.  Still, I have to use
DOS at work, but I don't do much surfing there.
>
>
>
>
>> [Mark]
>> OK, I see what you mean, intelligence that is like ours, not some
>> plasma pulsing or whatever.
>
>
> John:
>
> Hey!  Don't write off so fast, the hooloovoo, that hyper-intelligent shade
> of blue <http://mwillett.org/guide.htm>.  "One day all our websites will be
> powered by hooloovoo."

[Mark]
Just checked it, looks like D. Adams, good stuff.  Speaking of voodoo,
I heard on the radio, out of Jimmy Wells' mouth, that the average age
of contributors to Wikipedia was 26.  So I did a little math in my
head.  To create an average of 26, a contributor of age 40 has to be
offset by a contributor of 12.  Seeing as how there are many more
years after 26 than before, there must be an awful lot of teenagers
who are contributing to Wikipedia.  I could formalize the math better,
but, it would seem that many of the quotes that people use to support
their arguments in the forum were probably written by sixteen year
olds.  Oh, what a reputable site for knowledge Wiki is indeed.  Let's
go ask that elementary school student what he thinks of William
James...  Oh, and Marsha will be interested to hear that 85% of
contributors are male.  So we have pimply teenagers that take a break
from porn to write something intelligent for Wiki.  Isn't our present
source for "knowledge" great?
>
I will end it with that since I couldn't find any quote from a
snot-nose kid on Wiki to support my arguments.

Cheers,
Mark

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