[MD] MOQ is good. What is it good for?

[Dan Glover]

Mary,

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 11:47 PM, Mary <marysonthego at gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone who is distractingly named John on MD, but is not our John at LS
> said:
>
> If I'm misunderstanding the MOQ, please show me.  But I don't see how I can
> be mistaken.  It clearly stops at the intellectual level and clearly says,
> "That's all there is."  But that's not "all there is" for me!
> From my view, the transcendent experience of faith and worship is more
> Dynamic than intellectual experience, and its patterns are further advanced,
> Dynamically, than intellectual ones.
>
> Mary:
> This argument is around a lot.  If science or the MoQ doesn't validate
> religion - my religion anyway - then there's something wrong with science or
> the MoQ. My experience of the divine is completely real, it is said, and I
> know I've experienced God, etc., etc.
>
> John2 cont'd:
> you haven't excluded religion???
> C'mon!!  The only religion you haven't excluded is Buddhism.  You have made
> it patently clear that you and Pirsig are anti-theistic.  The MOQ tolerates
> religion but does not accept it as anything more than a flawed social
> pattern.  You have dismissed faith in God as "garbage, low quality".
> (Pirsig seems somewhat more tolerant.)
>
>  Pirsig avers that the four levels of the MOQ embrace all of evolution and
> of human experience.  Well, it deliberately (and I think arbitrarily)
> excludes the most significant dimension of my human experience!  I feel like
> someone who sees colors, and you see shades of grey and insist that seeing
> color is "very low quality".  I agree that some "very low quality" patterns
> have been of religion and in the name of religion. What's very low quality
> is subversion of color vision (faith) to social institutions that screw it
> up, or to bad intellectual constructs that are used to judge and abuse other
> people.  But seeing color isn't a bad thing just because you don't!
>
> Mary:
> There's the crux of the issue.  Not fair!  Not fair, you cry!  Why don't you
> treat my religion with the same respect you show for science?
>
> Well, as DMB is fond of saying, the MoQ is based on experience.  I agree for
> the most part, and would add that this must be extended to bring clarity.
> Get this. The MoQ is based on experience but NOT on your interpretation of
> experience.
>
> If you choose to interpret a personal sense of well-being, for instance, as
> being caused by God, that is your interpretation of experience, and static
> interpretation has very little to do with the actual experience.

Dan:
Who is to say there is an 'actual experience'? We each interpret
experience according to our personal histories so 'it' is unique to
all of us. Mind you, I am not so much disagreeing with you but seeking
to lend more clarity.

>Mary:
> Simple.
>
> Same goes for science, to be completely fair.  We used to think the earth
> was flat.  That was the epitome of science in its day; but then, somebody
> showed that the experience that looked like the earth was flat, was a wrong
> interpretation of the experience!
>
> The point is, the experience did not change, but the static interpretation
> did.

Dan:
How are they different? Remember the law of gravity in ZMM? Just as
the law of gravity did not exist before Isaac Newton the earth WAS
flat at one time.

>Mary:
> The biggest mistake a person can make is believing that their interpretation
> of experience is the only right one.  That causes trouble (and things like
> ISIS/ISIL).  I'm sure they believe America is being unfair to them too.

Dan:
We all have to believe our interpretation of experience is the right
one... otherwise we're wrong about everything. It is almost like
waking up in an unfamiliar place thinking you drank too much the night
before and slept it off at a friend's house only to discover later
that you are in fact in an asylum.

Everything we are is tied to our interpretation of experience, like a
briefcase we carry around with us. This is important to understand
when dealing with fanatics be they terrorists or in laws. They are not
ever going to change their interpretation of experience in favor of
ours. What we must do is kill them with kindness... make it impossible
to hate us.

>Mary:
> When religion, of any type, provides the most satisfactorily logical
> interpretation of reality, then, and only then, will people unite behind
> your interpretation of experience.

Dan:
I trust that would be a perfect interpretation of experience. If so,
then without anything better to strive towards we would be bound to
stagnate and die.

>
> Best,
> Mary of LS

Great post, Mary of LS! Thank you!

Dan

http://www.danglover.com