[MD] The Dynamics of Value

[John Carl]

Ho! Mark,


> >
> > 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?



John:  Sure!  The consciousness of my parents, my ancestors, the whole
world.   There's "consciousness" as a phenomenon, and then there's "my"
consciousness, which is just what resides within the shell of my being.  My
consciousness began after my birth in a process of slow awakening.

Mark:


> 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.


John:

Some kind of spark is necessary to explain life.  As Pirsig said, carbon and
molecules don't randomly form themselves into chemistry professors and you
and me.  I think of DQ as "the life force" and I don't quite understand it
completely.  Nor can I completely encapsulate it intellectually,  but here I
am anyway and so I know it must be.

Mark:


>  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.
>
>
John:  Right! And then how do you measure the age since the big bang began,
since that implies a contextual measurement operating outside of the
space/time continuum itself.  This is my gripe with modern cosmology and the
Hawking-ettes.  They absolutize the mental construct of consciousness  that
is time.

Mark:

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.
>


John:  Yeah, that's a sort of thorny problem.  I think I basically agree
that in an ultimate sense, the term "refication" is meaningless.  But in a
relativistic sense, it's a very useful concept for the denigration of a
tendency in man to assume that his abstractions are "real" (whatever THAT
is  :-)

So the ticklish thing then is, to know where to draw the line.  But then, as
we all know, that could be stated as THEE problem, indeed.



> > 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.
>

John:  First, I'd say we're seeking truth, even when we're not going very
deep.  "Depth" refers to the levels of abstraction and meaning in which we
dig.  People who insist on a very concrete understanding of truth then,
probably avoid depth for the very reason that the deeper you go, the more
nebulous truth becomes.  Whereas if you stay in the shallows, truth is
easy.  The cat is on the mat, or its not.  No further contemplation
necessary.

Perhaps with this understanding then, "Quality" is just truth at a much
deeper level of abstraction and meaning, where the notions of truth don't
work well anymore but we need *something* to go by....

I don't know if that is right, it just sorta flowed out of me in response so
I'll have to think about it a bit before I'm willing to set my flagpole on
it and salute it every morning.

 John prev:

 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.


John:  I guess there is a sense in which they could be construed as the same
thing.  I mean really, how can there be consciousness without choices of
values in discriminated awareness?  Consciousness = Quality, in other
words.  It's all just analogy, but that's a very old idea, the universal
mind and all that, and it's hung together as a cohesive metaphysical system
for thousands of years.  Idealism, I think it's called, and heck, I don't
mind saluting THAT flag, as you well know!

Mark:



> 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?
>

John:

I guess the one good reason to view it as a monism rather than a dualism or
trinity, is that that's the way Pirsig went and we're here because of him.
So given all the reasons for seeing things this way or that way, I vote we
go with the most unifying conceptualization possible - the monism.  Quality
= Consciousness, gets my vote.


>
> >
> [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?
>
>
John:

First, I think Quality above Truth sounds good.  It means Quality goes
deeper than intellect, and with that I agree. Intellect is our tool for
conceptualizing Quality, not the other way around.

Second, I think Pirsig's breakdown, and most breakdowns, have more to do
with social factors than either biological or intellectual.  Alan Watts
brought me to this realization in Psychotherapy East and West, that we are
placed in intense double-binds by our social contexts.  My own supposition
is that these double-binds are not solved by intellect, and the extremely
intelligent suffer more than joe blow on the street who basically say, fuck
it, goes to a bar or smokes some weed and puts it out of his mind.  That
sometimes, caring too much can drive you crazy.

Is my crazy supposition.



>
> [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.
>

John:  Well I think "his wife" is a key aspect of this thing I'm calling
"the intense social double-bind".  That's pretty much what wives are, if you
ask me!

And all this metaphysical stuff as well, might have gotten thrown under the
bus, as you say, but it was dragged out and revived with the realization
that we're human, and we pick up bar ladies and beer and philosophy and the
puritanical avoidance of degenerate things is its own form of degenerate
reliance.


> > John:
> >
> > 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.



John:  Oops!  Sorry, no.  I was trying to make the opposite point,
actually.  I do NOT prefer the subjective interpretation of experience.  I
think that is, the the "barking up the wrong tree."  I think Radical
Empiricism is a stance that builds a shield wall around the subjective
experience, by not allowing any formulation or ideas in that didn't or don't
originate with the self.  That's not what it SAYS it's doing, but when you
look at what it actually does in real life experience, that's exactly how it
works.

imo.

Mark:


>  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.
> >
>

John:

Well I'm pretty much on the same page with you there.  Experience is a
triune entity that is formed out of 1) memories from past experience 2)
ideas about goals and intention 3) random thoughts that arise in the moment,
seemingly out of nowhere.  1) is Father, 2) is Son, 3) is Holy Ghost.

Hey!  I just came up with that.  That's kinda cool.  (for a random thought
that arose in a moment)


John prev:

 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.
>
>
John:

Fair enough.  It doesn't work for you.



>
>
> [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.
>
>

John:

SweeT!  (sign along now... "I was apple, when apple wasn't cool)

I flirted with the complete switch to purism (linux) when I was really
involved with my server and ISP  tech support stuff, but when apple went to
the bsd kernel, I figured I was home free.

"If you are having trouble with sounding arrogant, just ask a Unix user."

Scott Adams.


> >> [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?
>

John:

Touche.  I wouldn't be surprised tho, that the vast majority of contributors
are of college age - they've got the most time on their hands, after all.
And like most college kids, the value of their work isn't just stemming from
their experience, it's stemming from their critics (the teachers) looking
over their shoulders.  I must admit I use wiki a lot.  I'm glad somebody
ahead of me had done the work.   But it's sorta like that broad river that
isn't too deep.  It does give you ideas on where to go if you want to learn
more, and that might be its chief utility to the serious seeker.  Not as the
final word, but as the beginning.

A beautiful day here in NorCal, I'm off to perform my outside duties.

L8tr ali-g8tr,


John the young at heart.