[MD] Sociability Re-examined

[Dan Glover]

John,

On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 3:26 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dan,
>
> You could say I put my response to you on the bottom of my pile...
>
> or you could say that I save the best for last!
> ything like you suggested
>
>>> Dan:
>>>
>>>> My point had more to do with being submerged in culture, human
>>>> culture. Everything we know is filtered through it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Jc:  Agree.  What is culture then but codified social patterns - turned
>>> into rules and truisims, matters of law and matters of courtesy?

Dan:
Culture is everything you know.

>>
>> Dan:
>> According to the MOQ culture is a collection of social and
>> intellectual patterns of quality.
>
> Jc:  According to experience, nothing that is above the 1st level, is
> just one kind of pattern.

Dan:
That depends on how you define experience.

JC:
> All higher patterns contain the lower, unless you believe in spirits
> or angels which are non-material beings.
> And there might be a possibility that non-living "entities" might be
> personalized and in  a sense,
> socially engaged.  This was Royce's postulation and it certainly was
> believed by many American Indian Cultures.

Dan:
I'm guessing you are pointing at animism here. Am I correct?

JC:
> Also Quantum Mechanics hints at the idea of consciousness being
> connected to matter.  Who knows?

Dan:
Not me.

>
>
>>
>> JC:
>>> These patterns have a basic structure of known rules - rules that if you
>>> break, society frowns in one way another.  The rules used to be handed
>>> by the Church, but we've changed and the church is dead, as an arbiter of
>>> morality anyway.  This isn't to say that we are truly post-religious,
>>> however.  We've just changed
>>> religions, that's all.  I'd say the modern religion is SOM.  Faith in the
>>> objective affirmation for one's subjective status.
>>
>> Dan:
>> I cannot buy that. It flies in the face of common sense. There are
>> plenty of religious people around, lots of churches, and tons of
>> believers. Subject and object metaphysics is a term used by Robert
>> Pirsig to describe a mind set pervasive in Western culture... it is
>> not a religion.
>>
>
>
> Jc:  I know that my assertion that Humanism is a kind of religion,
> falls flat.  But I think y'all are too blinded by
> your experience of religion and not thoughtful enough concerning the
> history and scope of religion.

Dan:
I suppose we cannot all be geniuses. I just muddle along the best that I can.

JC:
> The thing is, people have made a religious out of being
> anti-religious.  They don't see this because
> they associate religion with certain religions - they take the
> instances for the category.

Dan:
I for one do not care if you call it god or allah or krishna or what
have you... they are all fabrications. The holy books were all written
by human beings, not by any divine entity. Religion grew out of a need
to control the masses.

JC:
> I'd like to examine the category - what
> it is that religion is in its universal
> aspect rather than its particulars.

Dan:
Each culture invented its own gods to push back the night. The fear of
death has been around since the beginning. What did Vonnegut say?
There are no atheists in foxholes? I think that's right. When we are
confronted by our mortality the notion of a higher power lends comfort
when nothing else will. That is as close to universal as you'll get.

JC:
> It was in the most universal way,
> that I postulated the 3rd level as the religious level and only
> incidentally
> included SOM as a religious pattern.

Dan:
But you said and I quote:  "I'd say the modern religion is SOM."
Reading this quote you seem to see religion as subject and object
metaphysics. Now you seem to be saying religion is the 3rd level in
the MOQ. Are you changing your mind or simply attempting to work
things out?

>JC:
> As I see it, accepted intellectually drawn ideas must have a means of
> transferall to subsequent generations and religion is the mechanism by
> which
> truths are dogmatically transferred.

Dan:
What about those who grow up in nonreligious households? Are they
doomed to be babbling baboons and howling wolves?

>JC:
> I realize that this is a radical departure from the common way of
> viewing things, but I'd like some argument  on it besides,
> "that's not the common way of viewing things". :-)

Dan:
I don't see it as a radical departure at all. Instilling the fear of
god in children has been going on for centuries. Do you really think
it is working out for the best?

>
>>> Jc:   My proposal to address the religious aspects of the 3rd level is to
>>> everyone's advantage, I hope.  If it wasn't, I wouldn't bring it up.
>>> Religious thinking is at the root of more problems in the world than any
>>> other level.  Intellectual disagreements are settled
>>> through arguments.  Religious conflicts tho tend to more violent means.
>>> But that doesn't mean we can solve all
>>> these problems by ignoring religion or pretending it doesn't exist.
>>
>> Dan:
>> I don't think anyone is pretending religion doesn't exist. I know I'm
>> not. Nor am I ignoring it... I am addressing it as directly as
>> possible. From what I gathered, you were not addressing the religious
>> aspects of the third level so much as you were equating it with the
>> third level, as if human beings are bound up with religion to the
>> extent they cannot live without it, that it drives all their social
>> values, and without it we would be lost. It is that nonsense that I
>> cannot abide.
>
> Jc:  To be sure, I believe that without it all intellectual quality
> would be lost.  We have to have religion to transfer
> intellectual patterns of quality to our young, before they are old
> enough to intellectualize.

Dan:
I could argue we need Santa Claus for the same reason. Perhaps a
better question to ask is: when did it become acceptable to lie to our
children? Why do adults feel the need to indoctrinate their offspring
into the same petty dogma under which they have suffered even if
unknowingly?

>
>
>
>>
>>>JC:
>>> I would say that a strong component of the growth of fundamentalism in
>>> varying religions is due to a reaction against the SOM
>>> idea that there is no such thing as value.
>>
>> Dan:
>> I suspect if you were to ask any person of religion what SOM was, they
>> would have no idea what you were talking about. No... I would say the
>> growth of fundamentalism is the vine strangling the tree.
>>
>
> Jc:  Fundamentalists may not understand the label SOM, but what they
> are fighting against is the socially supported
> idea that there is no real basis for morality.  They go overboard in
> their reaction (that's the nature of reactions) but make no
> mistake, what they are reacting against is SOM.

Dan:
But our whole society is based on morality. Handcuffs and bullets
enforce it. From what I gather, most fundamentalists are fighting what
they perceive as class inequality, not subject and object metaphysics.
Again, it is highly doubtful fundamentalists even conceive of such a
scheme.

>
>
>
>>
>> Dan:
>> I don't see that at all. I think part of the problem is the preaching
>> of a static religion vs a Dynamic understanding outside the boundaries
>> of any religion... something like this:
>>
>> "There's an adage that, "Nothing disturbs a bishop quite so much as
>> the presence of a saint in the parish." It was one of Phaedrus'
>> favorites. The saint's Dynamic understanding makes him unpredictable
>> and uncontrollable, but the bishop's got a whole calendar of static
>> ceremonies to attend to; fund-raising projects to push forward, bills
>> to pay, parishioners to meet. That saint's going to up-end everything
>> if he isn't handled diplomatically. And even then he may do something
>> wildly unpredictable that upsets everybody. What a quandary! It can
>> take the bishops years, decades, even centuries to put down the hell
>> that a saint can raise in a single day. Joan of Arc is the prime
>> example.
>>
>> "In all religions bishops tend to gild Dynamic Quality with all sorts
>> of static interpretations because their cultures require it. But these
>> interpretations become like golden vines that cling to a tree, shut
>> out its sunlight and eventually strangle it." [Lila]
>>
>> Dan comments:
>>
>> That is the key to marrying science and religion. It will not happen
>> by thumping all the bibles in the world or by throwing around any of
>> the other holy scriptures. When you praise religious leaders, who are
>> you talking about? The bishops, of course, and not the saints. Saints
>> are too 'out there' to lead anyone anywhere. They may have followers
>> but they are not leaders.
>>
>> As far as I can see the MOQ does not denigrate science or the academy.
>> If anything, it is the static conventional religion that the MOQ finds
>> wanting, the fervent fundamentalists who close their eyes to anything
>> not written in their so-called sacred texts.
>>
>
> Jc:  The MOQ certainly denigrates science in the eyes of the
> scientist.  The scientist says science is all there is.
> The MoQ says there is more to experience than science can describe.

Dan:
If any scientist believed science is all there is, they would not be
scientists. What the MOQ opposes is value-free science... the notion
that we can somehow project our beings outside of the experiment and
look at it objectively. I think most scientists today realize the
fallacy in that.

>JC:
> The fundamentalist, like the MoQist, sees this flaw in science but
> throws out the baby with the bathwater by rejecting science
> where the MoQ simply puts it in its proper place.

Dan:
>From what I understand, the belief in the divinity of god is so
powerful in some people that they lose sense of the mundane. This
indoctrination begins in infancy and progresses through life until it
overcomes all good and common sense. Doesn't it stagger your
imagination to think there are people around who actually believe the
world is 6000 years old? These folk don't just throw out the baby with
the bathwater... they are literally raving lunatics who cannot be
reasoned with.

>
> Dan:
>
>> Here in the United States we have the creationists striving to
>> undermine science while in the Middle East there are those just like
>> them who desire to live by strictures so outdated no normal person
>> would believe it, which is what gives these people their power. There
>> is no arguing with them and the sad thing is that they will give rise
>> to a whole new generation.
>>
>> A little static religion can be a dangerous thing... a lot of it can be
>> deadly.
>>
>
> You're right, Dan.  It's just I think more understanding and analysis
> is needed, rather than the sneering rejection that religion as a whole
> generally
> receives.
>
> I'm just reading an essay by Royce on William James and it seems to me
> that James' thinking on the matter is brilliant and ought to be
> followed.
> I guess I should ask, how much of James does the MoQ embrace and what
> exactly does it reject?

Dan:
You'd have to ask someone else about that.

Thank you,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com