[MD] Step two

[Jan Anders Andersson]

David

24 aug 2014 x kl. 19:08 david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> dmb said:
> 
> These are not new ideas, really. ...It's a wide-spread and well-known way of thinking about our situation. Pirsig is giving us his own version but the basic categories really shouldn't be contentious or confusing. Sorry, but all these weird questions and bizarre suggestions about defining levels, adding levels, putting levels between levels, it's all just a bunch of boring nonsense that never, ever goes anywhere. Yawn. Please wake me when it's over.
> 
> 
> Jan-Anders replied to dmb and all:
> 
> It’s not over yet. The MOQ, with the knowledge of the 4 levels, is the tool that, correctly understood and mastered, can be applied on several misconceptions like...[snip] ...That is why I think it is important to try to find an easy, clear definition of the treshold between the levels, to avoid confusion. 
> 
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> 
> I don't understand why anyone should be confused in the first place - and I've never had much trouble applying the levels or the codes either. I use the levels to think about things every time I read the news, not least of all to shed light on the reactionary, anti-intellectual forces in the culture. As I see it, Jan, your quest for greater clarity is anything but clear and attempts to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. You recently said, for example, that "the question about the mysterious 5th biological level has to be solved." But biology is the second level and there is no "mysterious 5th level". This is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when I complained about "all these weird questions and bizarre suggestions about defining levels, adding levels, putting levels between levels". 
> 
> I haven't offered much feedback or criticism of your book, Jan, but I have no interest in reading it because your contributions to this forum have never given me any reason to believe that you understand Pirsig's work. Even thought you spend a great deal of time trying to sell your book, I still have no idea what it's about, no idea where you're coming from, and I certainly don't have any questions about a 5th biological level, whatever that's supposed to be. What do you think you're doing? Seriously. I'd like to know.
> 

I am not a web warrior, I am a disassembler type street philosopher person. When I was a young boy my father gave me a huge old radio receiver to play with. A huge wooden box with lots of funny stuff wired together inside. It took me years to tear it apart down into the last piece. I became a disassembler. I teared apart ants, flies, frogs and fishes. I dismounted the wheels of my elder brothers bicycle and hid them in under his bed. I also began to demolish our house until my mother catched me. Eventually I became an engineer in electronics, specialized on telephone systems. Later I found more interest in economics and studied for 5 years at a university and got a diploma in International Business, Marketing and Administration.

Telephone electronics is much about waves, electronic currents in a cyclic variable state or open/closed through various kinds of matter. There is a certain kind of maths for that. That mathematic discpline has a kind of start with Galileo Galilei, you know the guy who scared a lot of people in the 16th century telling them that the earth was not flat but round, forcing them to put their intellectual viewpoint out in the empty space instead from the safe, flat and familiar ground at home.

Galileo also invented the formula of the pendulum, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum. That formula is the base for anything that is in rotation because anything that moves can be disassembled into a couple of pendulums. You can also get a feeling of it by holding it in your hand and let it swing. Juggling with a basketball is also a way to feel how it works in reality. There are always a state of equilibrium somewhere asa balance between distance, force and the bouncing coefficient. The dynamic of water, how water is moving, is also based on the pendulum. I like to look at waves and streams, I can spend hours whatching water, just becuase of how it moves and I see the never resting pendulums in it. Many artists have tried to catch it but I like it best for real.

The equilibrium of a circular movement or a pendulum is the most economic use of time! Where the timing is best. Unbalance and bad timing sucks. That is why there are standing waves and musical tones etc.

I’ve heard that Einstein said that there is only now. Nothing exists outside but now. I agree with that but I don’t think it mean that I am as smart as him. The difference is just how we put the question. We have more than one tempus. We can also ask, what WAS it? What has been? History has been. The past was before now, as close as yesterday or just a minute ago. The future will come. All according to the second law of thermodynamics. Therefore, time is real. Every musician knows how important it is to play the notes in right order and with the right duration. Music is time-sculptures, organized sound in a certain order of time. Art is an act of balance in a perpetual change of time and a work of change into a new balance. Business and economics is how to save time for the customer and how to use the collected resources into the most efficient future.

That is why I am interested in the art of time and change. I am not talking about a 5th level. I want to understand the 4 MOQ levels and if there are something confusing I’d like to disassemble it and discuss it.

—

I began this thread about step one, two, three, the steps of the 4 levels of MOQ with Anthony McWatt and Eric Priezkaln's little essay "The Role of Evolution, Time and Order in Robert Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality”. Anthony issued a revised version called The MOQ and Time recently but I can’t find it on the web just now. This little essay also hold some responses from RMP so I think you should have it in your library.

My quest is based on two points:

The diagram on page 4 which shows how static patterns of quality are divided into four systems. The treshold, where a step into a new level evolves, is located at the left of each field-level.

On page 7 RMP wrote to Ant: "The MOQ starts with the source of undifferentiated perception itself as the ultimate reality. The very first differentiation is probably ‘change’. The second one may be ‘before and after’. From this sense of ‘before and after’ emerge more complex concepts of time.” Step zero is that start.

And from Lila of course.

I am curious about every little detail in this figure. What are the details in this 4 levels. I want to know and I can see that misconceptions about the levels are causing some trouble and miscomfort here and there. I think it would be useful to master this little issue. A romantic prefer what it is today, a classic will be more into how it works and the eternal mechanisms behind.

—

So about my book. If you are not interested in reading it is ok for me. I’ll just give a short brief about its background anyway.

The novel is really about money and the art of losing control!  But if you aren’t interested in money and rather want to keep control, don’t read it. Do never crack up or fall in love. Stay away from accidentual experiences even if it could be of dynamic quality. I wrote that book because the story sort of went up in my mind. It’s mostly fiction but I had some inspiration from ZAMM and Lila. I have also a lot of inspiration from other sources too. I was travelling around a lot in my car and all the pieces in the jig-saw puzzle fell together eventually so it took me just one month to write it down. There was a lot of yellow notes floating around in my mind that had to be put in order.

I’m not using that much effort to market it as you think but there are several connections to Pirsig’s works so I thought some of the more twisted people here would like to read it. Ant read it before it was published and he was a really good help with some changes and comments. 
The story takes some effort to read in the beginning because my plan, the structure, was to make it like a circular movement, uphill, hard and sweaty until you reach the top from where the roller coaster goes down again. I’ve been working on roofs of buildings for many years so I know how hard it is to walk up until you can enjoy the perspective. My intention was that from the top in chapter 7 and further on it mostly would be fun to read. It was fun to write too.

It’s free on Itunes bookstore, you can also buy it as paperback here: https://www.createspace.com/3895126 but you will miss the wonderful pieces of music in the ebook. My favourite is the song ”With A Condom All Over My Body” :-) That’s how socially twisted I am. (not really, I just couldn’t believe how someone (a swede of course) living in New York could write a song like that but it tells something about the border between the social and the biological/organical level…there are also references in literature there, Sture Dahlström, Cuckoo's Progress, but that book is so hard to find so I shouldn’t even mention it if I wasn’t because I'd guarantee that that book is just a hilarious read!) http://everything2.com/title/The+Cuckoo%2527s+Progress :-)

I think it have ”sold" about 4-500 copies yet. I don’t care that much because there isn’t much money in it.
I have at least one admirer that have contacted me a couple of times and that person is not mentally disturbed, major at an education centre. Marsha said she liked it too. We’re all different anyway.


Best wishes

Jan-Anders


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