[MD] 42

[Dan Glover]

On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 4:01 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> Andre,
>
>
> I have two things in mind: a very general question of why are we here on
>> earth? What is our purpose here?
>>
>> The second thing that mingles with this is Pirsig's variant on the
>> Buddhist poem on page 406 of LILA:
>> "While sustaining biological and social patterns
>> Kill all intellectual patterns...and then follow Dynamic Quality and
>> morality will be served"
>>
>> It appears to me that these lines refer to a non-dual perspective...the
>> fusing of what Paul, in his paper terms an epistemological and an
>> ontological context.
>> Presently the vast majority of the purpose of education seems to lie not
>> even close to either the epistemological nor the ontological context: it is
>> presented as driven by the given: driven by economics, industry, private
>> and public business corporations...their values incorporated and reinforced
>> through ('personal') exposure to and internalization of values serving
>> their vested interests (this is the ground stuff of mainstream education
>> including parental) plus a vast network of public service type values to
>> keep the system going...the political economy...the giant as Pirsig refers
>> to it in LILA.
>>
>>
> J:  I'm not exactly sure what a "non-dual perspective" would see, but about
> the Giant I agree and have a question for you, and in fact, for anybody who
> can answer.  Isn't it a de facto necessity that the Giant MUST operate
> according to a SOM system?  It seems that a values perspective would of
> necessity be operating on a shifting scale of shades of gray and what the
> system requires is a binary decision process of simple black and white in
> order to function.
>
> It just seems the checks and balances of competing selves that make up the
> body of the Giant, requires the metaphysical underpinning of a certain
> absoluteness of subject and object.  I ask because lately it occurs to me
> that the urge to "change the system" is inherently a lost cause.  I'd like
> to know for sure if that is so or not.

Dan:

"The metaphysics of substance makes it difficult to see the Giant. It
makes it customary to think of a city like New York as a "work of
man," but what man invented it? What group of men invented it? Who sat
around and thought up how it should all go together?

"If "man" invented societies and cities, why are all societies and
cities so repressive of "man"? Why would "man" want to invent
internally contradictory standards and arbitrary social institutions
for the purpose of giving himself a bad time? This "man" who goes
around inventing societies to repress himself seems real as long as
you deal with him in the abstract, but he evaporates as you get more
specific." [Lila]

Dan comments:
If I am reading this correctly, it means that there are no "competing
selves that make up the body of the Giant." When we begin to specify
the nature of the 'Giant' we see it doesn't really exist from a
substance point of view, only from a value-centric point of view.

So, no, this 'Giant' doesn't operate from the subject-object point of
view. It isn't comprised of people at all. In the MOQ these checks and
balances you talk about are social quality patterns set in place long
ago, not objects that are 'out there' floating around somewhere
dictating what a subject does or doesn't do.

I think this is important to understand in that 'the system' isn't
some hard-wired entity--an object, if you will--that is solid and real
and impervious to change. The system is real and yet non-physical. The
only thing that holds this system in place is our conception of it.

It is also important to note that our conception of the system is so
pervasive that it may seem impossible to change. From that point of
view, it is. But if we regard the four levels of the MOQ as competing
with each other, even opposing each other, it becomes apparent that
the intellectual level is in the process of freeing us from the
'Giant' even now.

Anyway,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com