[MD] The other side of Value

[Ham Priday]

Greetings All --


Marsha has been truckin' and duckin', leaving a long trail of thoughts and 
definitions to ponder.  Most of it recaps her own interpretations of static 
and dynamic Quality for which she seeks affirmation or further refinement..

I'd like to try something different by way of approaching the philosophy of 
Essence which I hope will be seen as relevant to the MoQ.  For the sake of 
clarity, I'm going to disregard the Pirsigian vernacular of SOM, Dynamic, 
Static, and Betterness, as well as the levels hierarchy that has confounded 
the newcomers and fueled the old guard.  Bear with me as I focus on what I 
consider to be fundamental to a valuistic philosophy.

Quality is a common label that we apply to objects, merchandise, and 
experiences that we sense as virtuous, good, or worthy in some way. 
Pirsig's philosophy is, at its core, a cosmology of Goodness.  But it also 
points to something else -- the "motivational power" of Value that 
transcends experience.  How can motivation extend beyond human experience? 
This, I submit, is the question the MoQ fails to address.

Mr. Pirsig has told us that Quality (Value) is not an attribute of either 
things or the apprehending self.  It exists in its own threshold, 
independently of the patterns that constitute the universe and the beings 
that experience it.  He claims it is indefinable, yet insists it is the 
moral ground of reality.  How does he know that the universe is a "moral 
system"?  What evidence does he provide that its evolution progresses to 
betterness?  And what is the final result or goal of this process?  Indeed, 
it is ever attained?

Let's assume that there is a "perfect entity" which we can only know as 
differentiated otherness.  (That assumption isn't difficult to make, for we 
surely didn't spring from nothingness, and arbitrarily compartmentalizing 
Perfection is a violation of Occam's Razor.)  Like Plato's cave people, we 
see moving shadows that come and go.  We know this shadow-world must 
represent something "real", but we can't discern what that reality is. 
Instead we measure the shadows, observe their behavior, give them proper 
names, study their dynamics and theorize their causes.  Through it all, we 
yearn for the essence of their being.  In short, we want the essence of 
being for ourselves.

That wanting -- that desire to fulfill ourselves, that aspiration to be one 
with the essential otherness -- is the driving force of mankind.  It is what 
I call Value.  It exists because we are NOT the other; we are, in fact, 
denied direct access to essential otherness.  As value-sensible beings, we 
can only represent it, experientially, as differentiated desiderata.

Difference, then, is the modus operandi of Creation.  Were it not for the 
difference by which we come into existence, Value would not be realized. 
And the "primary difference" which separates us from otherness accounts for 
all the qualitative, aesthetic, moral, and intellectual judgments we make 
about our existential reality.  From these valuations we give meaning to all 
created things, including life itself.

On the other side of sensible value lies the uncreated, unmoved and Absolute 
Source of this individually cognized world of appearances.  Value 
realization is "essential" in two ways: It is a sensible derivation of the 
Source; and it is our inextricable connection with the Source.  Therefore, 
it follows that whatever future awaits us when we have departed this life is 
"valuistic" in nature.

I offer this overview of the essential cosmology for you to re-interpret or 
expand Pirsig's Quality thesis as you see fit.  I understand that some here 
feel that Value, rather than nothingness, is the differentiator of 
existence, while others view existence as an S/O illusion created by Quality 
patterns.  But however we theorize physical reality, it seems to me that 
Value is too significant in our lives to be taken for granted, and that any 
value-based philosophy must posit a transcendent Source from which Value is 
derived.

Essentially speaking,
Ham