[MF] MOQ: valuable or not?

[Ant McWatt]

Sam stated to Dave Buchanan February 26th:

Here you are standing on your high horse, claiming the moral high ground of
fearless exploration of the intellectual truth wheresoe'er it may lead. You
appeal to the virtues of honesty and courage, and rhetorically ask ‘are we 
not
philosophers?’ Humbug…

And now you accuse ME of running away!! You're a hypocrite!! You are a 
coward!!
You have no intellectual integrity or honesty whatsoever!! You are an 
overblown
gasbag so caught up with the certainty of your own opinions that you 
wouldn't
recognise a Dynamic philosophical argument even if it was in the shape of 
Robert
Pirsig and flagged up with all the neon in Las Vegas!!

This is why I accuse you of only having stale tea. I'm not running away from 
an
argument you stupid idiot!!!! I've just given up on you after five years of
trying to have an honest intellectual conversation. I've realised you're not
capable of it - all you do is harangue me (and people like me) because 
you're
still working through your bad experiences of fundamentalist Christianity, 
and
you lack the intellectual breadth and imagination to realise that when there 
are
more than two billion Christians in the world they might not all believe the
same thing.

Ant McWatt comments:

Sam,

I think you’ve being a bit unfair here especially as you are a Christian 
minister in a discussion forum concerned with an anti-theistic philosophy.  
Isn’t a little criticism of this contradiction sometimes to be expected?  
Moreover, I certainly don’t rush into my local church service when I walk 
pass shouting “this is all mass hypnotising bullshit” though that might 
reflect my real opinion about organised religion.  As far as I can see (and 
admittedly I don’t have the time nor the interest to read every post on MOQ 
Discuss) Dave is now relatively quite polite towards his intellectual 
opponents and certainly more polite than the post you sent him quoted above. 
  Yet, his posts still remain clear, his understanding of the MOQ excellent 
and, for me, often educational.  As Bodvar observed last year, little do the 
swine know what diamonds are being thrown in front of them!   Anyway, in an 
attempt to see why your response was so disapproving and maybe provide some 
insight from an MOQ point-of-view, I have read the recent posts to do with 
this thread and re-read your Eudaimonic MOQ paper.

On the copy of your paper I originally printed off in 2003, I marked it at 
the top with the comment ‘flow’ which was a reference to Professor of 
psychology, Mihaly Csizkszentmihalyi’s 1990 text “Flow: The Psychology of 
Happiness”.  ‘Flow’ (what you term ‘eudaimonia’ and what Mark Maxwell terms 
the ‘sweet spot’) is mentioned in Pirsig’s work in conjunction with emotion 
and the MOQ’s Dynamic “code of Art” if you look properly.

The most famous example of ‘eudaimonia’ provided by Pirsig (1974, p.296-97) 
is, of course, high quality motorcycle maintenance:

“Zen Buddhists talk about ‘just sitting,’ a meditative practice in which the 
idea of a duality of self and object does not dominate one’s consciousness.  
What I’m talking about here in motorcycle maintenance is ‘just fixing,’ in 
which the idea of a duality of self and object doesn’t dominate one’s 
consciousness.  When one isn’t dominated by feelings of separateness from 
what he’s working on, then one can be said to ‘care’ about what he’s doing.  
That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one’s 
doing.  When one has this feeling then he also sees the inverse side of 
caring, Quality itself.”

This implies that the overcoming of the subject-object duality has a 
practical everyday significance in addition to any metaphysical one.  The 
peak of tuning in maintenance between mechanic and machine is even referred 
to as the ‘sweet spot’ within the industry.   As noted by Pirsig, a machine 
when tuned at its ‘sweet spot’ will require less maintenance and operate 
more efficiently.  When kept at this state, a motorcycle will experience 
less wear and damage than one operating under stress, be less prone to 
breakdown and thus assist in the quality of life for its rider.

A well maintained motorcycle will even be more critical for racing and it 
seems likely that the achievement of ‘eudaimonia’ in sport distinguishes 
excellent competitors from the mundane.  Such experience is noted by 
Csikszentmihalyi (1990, Chapter 1):

“If a tennis player is asked how it feels when a game is going well, she 
will describe a state of mind that is very similar to the description a 
chess player will give of a good tournament.  So will be a description of 
how it feels to be absorbed in painting, or playing a difficult piece of 
music.  Watching a good play or reading a stimulating book also seems to 
produce the same mental state.  I called it ‘flow,’ because this was a 
metaphor several respondents gave for how it felt when their experience was 
most enjoyable - it was like being carried away by a current, everything 
moving smoothly without effort.”

Moreover, such personal experience is evident in mathematics.  Again, this 
is another famous example found in ZMM.  The aesthetic feeling noted by 
mathematicians (such as Poincaré and Dirac) may be described as an intense 
coherence between their repertoire of intuitions and postulations. Thus, 
intellectual creativity and insight emerge at a ‘sweet spot’ of coherence 
and, conversely, are reduced by too much reliance on static methods.  
‘Genuine mathematics, then, its methods and its concepts, by contrast with 
soulless calculations, constitutes one of the finest expressions of the 
Human spirit.’  (Jan Gullberg, “Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers”, 
1997, p.xxi).  Indeed, as Pirsig implies, it would appear that mathematics, 
at its best, follows the MOQ’s Dynamic “code of Art”.

In the Arts, the ‘sweet spot’ is much evident especially in music.  I have 
observed (when visiting music venues with classes to hear various extracts 
of British Classical music) that certain pieces (such as Vaughan Williams’ 
“The Lark Ascending”) can often produce an involuntary emotional response in 
a substantial number of students.  I would suggest, therefore, that such 
pieces reflect the harmony (when performed properly) as experienced in the 
Japanese arts and is why they produce such noticeable effects.  I would 
further speculate that these effects are present to a lesser extent in 
everything we encounter (most experiences being less harmonic than a 
performance of Quality music or even being discordant) whether it’s people, 
buildings, natural scenery, poems or other works of art.

An indication that a ‘sweet spot’ is occurring is that it involves a degree 
of dissolution between the static patterns, as notions of self are reduced 
or even forgotten.  Again, this is supported by Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 
Chapter 1) who observes:

“We feel involved, concentrated, absorbed.  We know what must be done, and 
we get immediate feedback as to how well we are doing.  The tennis player 
knows after each shot whether the ball actually went where she wanted it to 
go; the pianist knows after each stroke of the keyboard whether the notes 
sound like they should… We forget ourselves and become lost in the 
activity.”

Csikszentmihalyi further notes that: ‘this state of consciousness... comes 
as close as anything can to what we call happiness’ where we may experience 
high intensity wonder and joy.  An intense coherence of static patterns may 
indicate the beautiful or may even approach a mystic experience.  Such may 
be enlightenment - an exceptional ‘sweet spot’ between static quality 
patterns.

“We feel a sense of transcendence, as if the boundaries of the self had been 
expanded.  The sailor feels at one with the wind, the boat, and the sea; the 
singer feels a mysterious sense of universal harmony.  In those moments the 
awareness of time disappears, and hours seem to flash by without our 
noticing.” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, chapter 1)

Furthermore:

“Contrary to expectation, ‘flow’ usually happens not during relaxing moments 
of leisure and entertainment, but rather when we are actively involved in a 
difficult enterprise, in a task that stretches our mental and physical 
abilities. Any activity can do it. Working on a challenging job, riding the 
crest of a tremendous wave, and teaching one’s child the letters of the 
alphabet are the kinds of [Dynamic] experiences that focus our whole being 
in a harmonious rush of energy, and lift us out of the [static] anxieties 
and boredom that characterize so much of everyday life.”
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, chapter 1)

I therefore doubt that your 2003 paper clarifies the MOQ because it 
conflates ‘eudaimonia’ with the intellectual level while, in fact, it is 
better related to the MOQ’s ‘code of Art’ i.e. particularly Dynamic 
experiences.  Moreover, it’s worth being aware that biological feeling 
doesn’t always relate to the Dynamic code of Art which is a distinction I 
don’t think you make clear enough.  Emotion (such as a gut feeling) can 
certainly aid our intellectual decision making process (by reflecting the 
Dynamic) but - in the MOQ - it still remains completely biological in 
itself.  This distinction was clarified by Pirsig in a letter to me from 
March 1997:

“From your own reading of ‘Zen in the Art of Archery’ you know that the ‘it’ 
of the Zen master in no way resembles the naked will to power and egotistic 
self-satisfaction of the Nietzschean ideal.  The main reason for dropping 
the Classic-Romantic dichotomy of ZMM and setting up the static-Dynamic 
dichotomy of Lila, was to help avoid this confusion.  I think this confusion 
destroyed the hippies, many of whom were idealistic people but descended 
into biological hedonism from which they had no intellectual defense.  An 
enlightened person will never make the confusion because for him the Dynamic 
Quality, the dharma, is a reality far more ‘real’ than emotions and egotism 
of the biological level; far more real, even, than subjects or objects.”

“For a person who is not yet enlightened the way to avoid the confusion may 
be to ask of each desire, ‘Is this a common ego desire? Is this a common 
sensual desire?’  If not, then maybe the quality which stimulates the desire 
is Dynamic.  If it is a common sensual or egotistic desire, however, then 
one should wait a few days and see if the desire weakens or goes away.  
Sensuality and egotism have a way of waxing and waning in the manner of the 
emotions, whereas Dynamic Quality tends to be steady and patient, in the 
manner of Gandhi's favorite Christian hymn, ‘Lead Kindly Light.’ All this is 
just chatter, however.  I am not attempting to define or even adequately 
describe Dynamic Quality here.”

Anyway, I hope the above is some help and maybe you can even include ‘Lead 
Kindly Light’ in one of your services soon?  I'll even buy you a beer if you 
do.

Best wishes,

Anthony.


Krishnamurti declared that truth cannot be found through any sect or 
religion but only by freeing oneself from all forms of conditioning:  “My 
only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free”.  Biographical 
detail from Krishnamurti’s “Truth & Actuality”, 1977, p.3.

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