[MF] reality: interactions or quality?

[Sam Norton]

Hi Ian - this made me smile, beautifully balanced and all that. I'm all in 
favour of avoiding polarisation, but sometimes it *is* hard...

Now then, you said: "we understand what [religion / love] means by seeing what 
is done [in its name]"

The trouble with that is working out who is doing what in whose name - moderate 
Muslims, for example, will doubtless point out that 9/11 was not done in the 
name of their religion, whereas Osama Bin Laden would disagree. Same applies 
with something like the Spanish Inquisition (except I think Monty Python are the 
authority there ;-) Or with science - is the eugenic research conducted by the 
Nazis during WW2 done 'in the name of science' - undoubtedly the Mengeles of 
this world were _learning_ something, and they would have described it as 
science. The list goes on and on. Who gets to say whether something is done 'in 
the name' of the religion or not? It becomes political.

More particularly, the assertion that "religion causes war" - as deployed 
recently by the Dawkins' of this world - has a very particular historical origin 
in the second half of the 17th Century, and is bound up with the aggressive 
assertion of a Modernist worldview. Given where we now are - and how much 
research on this has been done, and is widely available on how and why the 
Modernist project breaks down - I think we need to do a bit more than recycle 
the Enlightenment cliches (which is, frankly, all I seem to be getting from 
certain quarters). I'll stop there otherwise my hobby horses will get running 
again, and that's just as stale.

The interesting point - on which I think we agree - is that it is the behaviour 
associated with the language that constitutes the meaning of the words used. So 
if you cut the bit from square brackets at the end, I'd be happy, ie: "we 
understand what [religion / love] means by seeing what is done".

You said before: "In fact I think most of us who've had time to think about 
"quality" can see "faith" at the root of any metaphysics, and love in his 
quality interaction metaphors. I think choosing the word "quality" was his 
stroke of genius. A deliberately ineffable "quality" we could all already 
identify with - not too scientific, not too religious - and enough rope to hang 
ourselves with of course."

I think this is right. More specifically, I think that as soon as you are 
talking about 'high quality interactions on the third and fourth levels' - which 
we might occasionally do in the course of this conversation - then you are 
talking about what the Christian tradition calls 'love' (and I guess what the 
Buddhist tradition calls 'compassion'?). Seems very much like the same sort of 
thing to me. Love is value - if you love someone or something there is a 
relationship of value there. Simple as that.

Sam
http://elizaphanian.blogspot.com/