[MF] - On why one might value the MOQ

[Muzikhed at aol.com]

I wrote this 2/15/05 - this is one of those I didn't send...
I figure I may as well send it now, as everyone's threatening to quit all  at 
once. 
The question was why some people find value in the Moq, while others  don't.
This was my answer.  There's very little G*d in here, but probably  little 
interest either.
Still, it was my answer to Kevin.  It may shed more light on who I  am.  
Thanks, Anthony for the recent and most intelligent input to the  MF.    
 
Ted C (Muzikhed) previously said:
--------------------------
Maybe recognition  of the MoQ has as much to do with the people doing the 
recognizing as with  the MoQ itself. (?) 
Are you saying that a good metaphysics  should be more popular at this point 
if it is really any  good?




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... but this expansion was delayed till now...(2/27/06)
 
I am also curious on the issue of why some people recognize value in the  
MoQ, while others don't.  Curious, but, not clueless, I guess.  I know  why, in 
the general sense.  The MoQ is a new idea, and at this point  in history, it 
takes a certain preparation to be able to understand it.   Like other powerful 
ideas, it can be difficult to grasp without  preparation.   And the preparation 
required, while  intellectual, is obviously not Standard Academic 
Preparation.    
 
There are a lot of people who are not prepared for looking  at 
intellectually, because they haven't had the time or interest.   Then there are people that 
have interest, and linguistic and logical  tools.  These are usually the 
'educated' people.  But the MoQ was  not part of their education.  Their education 
was built upon the older  models of reality which the MoQ critiques.  
 
So you need the education, but you also have to step, or fall, outside  it, 
in some way.
It helps if you've always been questioning the assumptions, and if  you've 
noticed obvious contradictions that everyone else is happy to  pretend make 
sense.  You might also need to be broken, in some  way.  It may be the people who 
are most open to the MoQ are people  who, like Pirsig, put a whole lot of 
(dare I say it?) 'faith' in Reason, and the  Scientific Method as a young person, 
and eventually found, via one route or  another, that "there is a problem with 
rationality itself".   In  my case, I'm still not sure what happened, but 
somehow it was  the defense of my rational principles led to my personal  
disaster.    This is a trite metaphor, but since the MoQ puts  everything together in 
a new way, it helps to  be able to first break  apart the old, or have it 
broken for you.  And it's not fun to be  broken.  
 
In the summer of 91, before Lila, my life blew wide open, but like  a 
backward explosion.
It went from raging chaos to pure calm.    In the  center of the calmness of 
that summer I first sensed the wholeness.  I  felt the sense of immediacy, 
combined with my personal experience,  knowledge of history, and the concept of 
evolution, amidst the total calm of a  summer day, an evening fire, the stars, 
and solitude.  
I felt a new sensation that everything is real.  Even the phony  stuff.  It 
could be that my outlook on life went from very negative to very  positive very 
quickly.  Perhaps because I was feeling right inside, the  world outside 
seemed to be working right.  I could see value in  everything.  I could see a 
reason, a history, a value for everything I saw,  with the emphasis on everything. 
  Many things made me  smile just for being ordinary.    
  Later that year (91), I took a few long trips alone, keeping  journals and 
drawing sketches of America. I had lots of contemplation time,  just before 
Lila's arrival.  The MoQ just seemed like a natural "Right On!"  to me in early 
92 when I read it.  I felt I totally 'got' it.   But I did not pursue it then, 
I just pursued my future life.
 
    An example of my changed viewpoint in '91 was how I  saw advertising.  
Before this enlightenment, I saw  advertisements as many things, mostly 
negative: deceptive  information devices, effective manipulators of desire, i.e. I had 
a  rational analysis for the advertisement that put it in its place,  
intellectually.  Yet I knew that advertisements sometimes worked on  me. I rejected 
them, yet they affected me.   So I would  mentally interact with the 
advertisement - "this interests me, ah, but it's an  ad, it's a lie.  The people are 
actors, they are not real. -they are  reading a script. etc."   The shift mental 
shift, came from  seeing that contrived commercial message, and everything 
else can not be  entirely rejected as 'fake', because it is really some real 
person's production,  real people set up the contrived sets, and someone really 
wrote the copy,  someone ran the mike and the lighting in the phony little set 
that  day.   So, although pure contrived image, it was contrived by someone  
for a reason.  They thought it was good.  If it worked for  them, I'd see their 
phony setup more than someone else's phony  setup.   So rather than scorn, I 
felt amazement that something so  apparently contrived and intellectually empty 
has found a thriving survival  niche.
 
 This may sound obvious, or stupid, but I seemed to be giving  everything 
some equal credit for just existing, instead of rejecting it  outright because I 
didn't like it, or I thought it was 'fake'.   
 
 Then I saw politicians in the same way.  I had always rejected  their 
speeches as phony, like ads.  I started to see them rather as  real people that were 
actually successful at 'representing' through  the structures of government, 
and trying to play every role that goes along with  that simultaneously.  They 
suddenly became amazing in a different  way.   
They really have to juggle all that ?  Even the graft and corruption  is 
'real'.  And there must be some draw, some pull, some crazy  enticement to make 
the corruption real...    
It's all a crazy carnival of 'what's happening now.'
 
    Perhaps I was ready to 'get' the MoQ because I'd  had this change of 
outlook, started to see everything as equally valid in  its own way, and I saw 
everything as part of one unified  evolution.    By acknowledging all things, 
including things  morally good, and things morally not good as all 'valid' in the 
sense that they  really exist, I was ready to see Pirsig's MoQ,
which brilliantly unifies the whole unfolding scenario.  Static  quality is 
Value temporally  'frozen', locked in to structure,  traits preserved in DNA, 
ideas reprinted in books, social traditions,  laws.   Without the static 
latching, decay to chaos, all progress  lost.  Too much static latching, though, 
leads to stagnation, loss of  freedom.  Balance, dynamic equilibrium, harmony, 
conflict.   
 
    By not having read a lot of other philosophy, yet  being exposed to many 
of the philosophical issues via the history of science,  and psychology, by 
being fully trained in Analytic Geometry & Classical  Mechanics, by having 
exposure to (but not investment in) mystic modes (Buddhists  & Native American 
cultures), these may be other factors that made me more  receptive to Pirsig's 
line of thinking.  
 
 
Ha.  OK. So I can understand via his books how Pirsig's life put him  in a 
unique position to 'discover' the MoQ (i.e. have the new MoQ idea),  and I can 
understand (but not briefly convey) how my life put me in a position  to be 
open to the recognizing the value of the MoQ, and I can understand  why a 
majority of people have not recognized the MoQ, and I have a few reasons  why it 
might be that many educated people with the tools and interest  required to 
understand it might not be open to it.  
 
It's like anything else.  Each person may independently find it  of value, or 
not.  
I am still curious, if anyone else has a clear cut idea why they think  they 
personally are more (or less) able to 'recognize' the value in the MoQ than  
others.
 
I acknowledge that the MoQ is not widely valued  yet.  I value the MoQ more 
highly than most, and (even  acknowledging there's a lot of raw diversity out 
there) I feel my life has been  to some bizarre and extreme places.  Is there a 
connection?
  
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Also, thanks Stephen for the earlier reference to Bohm.  Sounds  interesting, 
I'll look for it.  
 

Ted 




"Like most amazing things
 it's easy to miss...
 and easy to mistake,
 'cause when things are really great
 it just means everything's in its place."
 
Aimee Mann - I've Had It