Respect, just a little bit

Posted on January 29, 2011 by ls

One of the very first posts here listed the four basic rules for understanding the four levels.  In case you’ve forgotten, here they are again.

  • 1. Everything in the universe can be assigned to one of the four Levels.
  • 2. You assign things to the correct Level based not on the properties of the thing, but on what that thing values.
  • 3. Everything has its place. Nothing can end up with no Level, though some things do reside in more than one.
  • 4. The Levels have a hierarchical or evolutionary relationship to each other.

 

According to Pirsig, hidden within the meaning of the four levels is everything you need to know to make high Quality moral evaluations.  In Lila, Pirsig explains how he views the levels as a tool for determining the most moral course in any situation.

We walked through expanding on the levels in some previous posts, and picked up some insights into the four rules to help us along the way.  For instance, we learned that just because something belongs to one level doesn’t mean it can’t also value things at other levels too.  Human beings are a great example of this since we value patterns at all four levels at once.  But just because we value all four levels as part of our existence, doesn’t mean they are all equally valuable. 

Pirsig explains that the levels are in a moral hierarchy with each other.  While the Inorganic level is moral, valuable, and of Quality, the Biological level is even moreso.  So if you are in a situation where you are forced to choose between the morals of the Inorganic and the morals of the Biological, you must always opt for the Biological since it is higher up the moral hierarchy. 

The caveat here is that you must be respectful of what you are doing, remembering that all is Quality.  If you accept a Biological value over an Inorganic one, that is ok as long as that Biological value does not result in the destruction of Inorganic values.  I’m having a little trouble thinking up a good example of this, but if I could, it would be a situation where upholding the morals of the Biological would result in the obliteration of mass or energy – two values that are prized highly by the Inorganic.  This would be wrong, you see, because if you destroyed the Inorganic there would be no way for the Biological to even exist, and thus it wouldn’t matter that some Biological value was upheld, because there would be no Biological values around to appreciate it.

This works the same in reverse, and is easier to see.  According to Pirsig, it is immoral to value the Inorganic patterns over the Biological ones.  It would be immoral for any Inorganic pattern to overpower Biological life.  An example here might be the atomic bomb.  Inorganic patterns might value the energy released since it results in the potential for so much Inorganic creativity, but setting one off would surely result in the demise of the Biological patterns and that would be bad.

The level system is not just a straight line advancing toward ever greater Quality, though at the same time it is completely correct to say that it is!  It may be seen as an arrow advancing toward greater Quality, but it is also an interdependent loop where each successive level disrespects its predecessors at its own peril.  The tough thing to grasp about this is that the entire set of values of each level are designed for exactly that purpose.  The values of the Biological do not in any way even acknowledge the existence of the values of the Inorganic, nor do they acknowledge the existence of the higher Social level either.  Each level operates independently within its own set of POVs, and these POVs are dumb.  They behave as though they are the be all end all of value.  When you think about it, how could it be otherwise?  They are each an independently existing set of POVs that believe they are beholden to no others.  They are both wise and dumb at the same time.

The interplay of the values between each level is a dangerous game, and the values themselves within each level are not even aware of it.  Only a higher level can have any hope of comprehending the nature of the relationship between two lower ones, and even there, their perceptions are colored by their own values.

This is getting pretty deep I imagine, so let’s take a simple example.  The Biological level values safety and reproduction.  All of its values are focused on maximizing life and creating even more life.  But what if it were completely successful?  As we know, the greatest misery for any species happens when it is too successful for its own good, reproduces to the point where it consumes all available resources, and in this way causes its own demise.  If you realize that the resources sprang from a finite set originally created at the Inorganic level, then you can see that appeasing entirely the drives of the Biological will ultimately result in overpopulation and not enough resources to support everyone.  This is tragic and if not checked will lead to the demise of the species.  There are finite limits to the total of Inorganic resources available and woe to the species that does not respect this.  The Biological does not and cannot.  All it values is safety/longevity and reproduction.  It takes some higher set of values to control those impulses.

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Egomania

Posted on January 27, 2011 by ls

Reading back over the posts from this first month of LilaSquad, I see that I’ve really been hammering you with the idea that the levels are differentiated by what they value and not what characteristics they share.  Are you tired of it yet?  As you continue your journey toward becoming a real “MoQer”, you’ll come to love this distinction.  It is so fundamental to understanding the MoQ that you’ll find you never get tired of it, and almost reflexively use it in your personal MoQ Game every day.

It’s a real puzzle to work out the meaning of each level and the relationships they have with each other.  True MoQers are constantly honing their value-perception skills and take pleasure in their mastery of understanding what each level values that differentiates it from every other.

There is a real area of confusion, though, and it has mostly to do with the name of the highest level.  Once you get past a basic understanding of the Inorganic, Biological, and Social, you begin to see that where the Intellectual level is concerned, it’s hard to draw a clear line.  When you think about it you realize pretty quickly that there had to have been lots of thinking going on long before the Intellectual level ever existed, but, since it’s called the “Intellectual” doesn’t that mean that it’s the place where all thinking is valued?  You have to ask yourself, how could people construct societies, engage in politics, fight wars, or form friendships if they did not first have the ability to think?  Well, of course, they couldn’t!  The Intellectual level is not the place where all thinking occurs.  That would be far too simple and not very useful either.  It would put the lie to the reason-for-being of the Social level for one thing.  It’s far more subtle than that.

You won’t get an argument from me if you say that other species have social behavior too.  It’s pretty easy to see that.  Dogs and wolves run in packs and hunt cooperatively – even signaling each other to move in for the kill.  Ants do the same, and so do a million other species both present and long extinct.  Cooperative or relational behavior has a long history in time, and for good reason.  It works.  Many successful species do it.  If you are a predator, it’s possible that you are biologically favored by being a loner, but not if you are a prey animal.  Safety in numbers is a time-honored strategy; and, when it comes to raising your offspring, would you rather be a single parent or part of a family unit where you can get some help once in a while?

The point is that each level contains precursors of the next, but it isn’t until those precursor values take off on “purposes of their own” that they truly achieve the status of a new level.  It seems pretty clear to me that way back in the Biological level, long before there were humans, societies, cities, or universities, there was thinking going on.  As a species who’s highest level of values is to survive and reproduce and that’s it, even there you can see the advantage of being even just a little bit smarter than your competitors.  If you can figure out how to get food when those around you can’t, then you stand a much better chance of getting your DNA into the next generation.  There’s something else you can say about biological intelligence too.  You have to care that you survive.

If you don’t see yourself as unique from anything around you, then what possible difference could it make to you whether you live or die, and whether you reproduce successfully or not?  I don’t think it would make any difference.  If you failed to see yourself as separate and unique from the rocks, trees, and other animals around you, then you would have zero motivation for saving yourself.  The whole concept of ego must have been born in the Biological level. 

I’m sure at first it was pretty rudimentary, but that’s where it got its start.  That’s not to say that an earthworm gets offended when its ideas are dismissed!  But it is correct to say that an earthworm values its continued survival over not surviving, and that is the foundation of this whole thing we call ego today.  Separateness.  Differentiation.  Uniqueness.  That’s where it all began.  And if, like me, you feel like this whole ego thing has gotten entirely out of control, then at least now you have some idea of why it exists and why it is so fundamental to who we are.  We all carry deep genetic memories mandating that the ego be preserved at all costs.  It doesn’t matter that its original purpose has been long forgotten, or that it has expanded along with our intellectual capacities to the point where it’s almost unrecognizable from its – dare I say “humble” beginnings.  What matters is to realize that it is a part of our psyches that has incredibly deep roots, and those roots must be honored.

The ego makes it possible for us to value ourselves and also value others.  First you view yourself as unique.  You are different from everything else and you value yourself.  But you don’t operate in a vacuum.  One of the first things any unique individual does is establish relationships with other unique individuals.

At the Biological level, these relationships are motivated by survival and the need to reproduce – the values of the Biological set of SPOVs.  Through the evolution of most species on Earth that’s the extent of it. But as our brains evolved greater complexity, the motivations for our behavior gradually took on accoutrements – that is, greater subtlety.  Eventually, we reached a point where the original motivators, safety and sex, existed alonside more complex motivations, and there came a day when the ego “took off on purposes of its own”.   It no longer existed merely to enhance survival and reproduction.  That doesn’t mean we quit worrying about safety and reproduction, it’s just that we started adding more values on top.

The demarcation line between any two levels is only apparent in hindsight.  The evolution of patterns of value is long, slow, and happens in fits and starts.  You won’t be able to name a day when the Social level emerged from the Biological.

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Boundary Values

Posted on January 26, 2011 by ls

Trying to find the boundary between two levels can seem easy if you view them as collections of like things.  The problem is it’s just not what Pirsig had in mind when he laid them out in Lila.  The fundamental insight he first had in Zen was his realization that the world is not composed of subjects and objects, but is made up of patterns of value instead.  That we see the world as subjects and objects is only because we have chosen to do so.  Pirsig says everything is first and foremost Quality, and only after we experience the Quality do we divide the experience we had into subjects and objects.

If you reject subjects and objects as the fundamental way to divide up the world, and then you construct a metaphysics which says the world can be divided into patterns of value, then each of those levels of patterns of value cannot be based on the properties of the thing in question.  His levels are not. 

Properties like color, weight, shape, etc. relate to objects.  It is common to say things like, “That thing has quality”.  When we say something like that, we usually mean we find value in the thing.  We see quality or value in some things and prize them over other things because of it.  But Pirsig turns that on its head.  “The thing doesn’t have value”, he says, ” the value has the thing”.  The values appear first, and prize a thing for its ability to enhance or support those values.

When working with Pirsig’s levels, you have to keep this constantly in mind, otherwise you risk misunderstanding the point of the levels.  For instance, a rock doesn’t so much have mass as that it values mass, so any other things that also value mass could be put in the Inorganic level too.

As we move up the hierarchy of the levels, though, it gets confusing since things can have existence at multiple levels at the same time.  You are a human being who has mass – or more correctly – values mass.  You are also biological and thus value life.  You are a member of a society and value that, and have intellectual level values too.  A human being represents all four levels simultaneously since we find value in all four levels.  We would not exist as true human beings if we did not.

So, when you are trying to figure out the highest level to which anything could be ascribed, you have to examine the highest values that thing appreciates to know where to put it.

The Social Level patterns of value appreciate things like community, cooperation, and relationships between living beings.  Just like the Inorganic and Biological, the Social level has varying degrees of complexity.  At the Inorganic level we can easily see that fundamental particles congregate together to form more and more complex configurations, but in the end they all – no matter how complex – still value basic mass and energy.  This helps to distinguish things at this level.  Anything at all that does not find its highest values in mass or energy is not operating at the Inorganic Level – at least not exclusively.

The Biological or Organic level values life.  There can be debate about how to define life – is a virus alive?  Does all life have to be carbon-based?  But anything that is capable of reproducing itself in some way can be said to value the Organic.

If you remember that each level arises from the one that came before and goes off on ‘purposes of its own’, then you can see that though you may see precursors of the Biological in the Inorganic, and precursors of the Social in the Biological, the line of demarcation between them doesn’t happen until the Social values reach a point where they are no longer merely there to support the Biological, but transcend it and exhibit their own unique set of patterns of value.

At each level you will see that the set of patterns of value have transcended the parent to such an extent that they are actually in opposition to it.  Social values, for instance, can go off on purposes of their own to the point that they no longer value rampant, uncontrolled reproduction, and start to value not having offspring at all.  Priests and nuns come to mind.  Where you see things like this, it is a clear guide to the line of demarcation between the Biological and Social, and the same kinds of indicators are there to see at the other boundaries as well.

Don’t worry if you feel like you don’t understand all this.  We’ve just started to scratch the surface and there are plenty more examples to come.

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Its all about relationships, baby

Posted on January 15, 2011 by ls

To understand the levels, you need to know that they are not based on grouping ‘like’ things in categories, though they look like they are.  Instead, they represent what are called sets of Static Patterns of Value, or SPOVs for short. 

We learned last time that Inorganic SPOVs include things that value existing v.s. not existing.  That is, things that have mass, energy, and a relationship with time and each other are valued, but nothingness is not.

Since each level builds on the one before, the Biological level builds off its Inorganic base, but does not value the same things.  In fact, each set of SPOVs can be defined that way.  In Chapter 12 of Lila, Pirsig says, “as the higher level gets more sophisticated it goes off on purposes of its own.”  So, while a life-form has mass, and takes that as a given, what it values is the ability to survive and reproduce.  Any new enhancement that comes along to make survival or reproduction easier or better is viewed as a good thing.  It is valued.  It is moral.

You might have an objection right away.  If the Biological level values life, survival, and reproduction, then how do you account for the fact that life-forms go around killing and eating each other every day?  Wouldn’t that be immoral?  Wouldn’t that violate the values of the level?  I mean, if you say that the Biological level values life, then killing and eating another life, even to stay alive, would be bad, wouldn’t it?

Well, it would certainly be bad for the life that got killed and eaten!  But not for the overall level itself.  You have to take the big-picture view here.  What’s bad for an individual entity is not necessarily bad for the level as a whole.  If by killing and eating less evolved life-forms a more highly evolved one can survive, then the values have been preserved.  It’s ok to eat a hamburger and fries.  You are more highly evolved than a cow or a potato.

Wow!  This gets pretty complicated, doesn’t it?

Well, Pirsig explains the levels as a sort of evolutionary arrow always pointing in the direction of Quality, yet woe to the level that fails to have respect for those that came before!  The foundation or building blocks for each level, that is, what makes it possible for that level to exist, are always found in the previous one.  In the two-level hierarchy we’ve built up so far, life does not value the same things as inorganic matter, but life better be respectful of it, for without mass and energy and thing-ness, there could be no life in the first place.

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How our minds pay lip-service to Quantum Physics

Posted on January 7, 2011 by ls

You’ve aced Level 1, and now it’s time to step it up a notch.

Level 2 is the Biological.  I’ll bet you get that it’s life, but before plunking stuff into buckets, this might be a good time to reflect on what we can learn from Level 1.

If you think about it, you could probably put just about everything in the Inorganic Level.  At its most basic, everything that has mass or energy could reside there.  Another thing you might pick up on is that everything at the Inorganic Level has some relationship to everything else.  Things that can’t be compared, contrasted, or differentiated from some other thing in some way just wouldn’t cut it.  They would have to fall into the category of some kind of “unreal” thing.  If you agree that no two things can be in the same place at the same time, and if you agree that no one thing can be in two places at once, then when you see things like that, your mind would tell you you are seeing two different things.  It can’t help it!  If something is no different from something else (and that includes its position in space and time) then you would be hard-pressed to convince me it is a different thing. 

Can you think of anything like that?  No?  Neither can I, though to be fair, or more correctly, to be thorough, the observations of quantum physics seem to show that.  Ok, let’s say you are Mr. Super Quantum Physicist in your laboratory and you observe that particle A appears to be in both location A and location B at the same time.  You want to be a really cool, with-it physicist, so you pronounce to everyone that you just saw one particle that was in two places at once!  You stand by your observation, you publish a big paper and you thrill all your fellow physicists – but I can tell you this… In the middle of the night, when you are all alone, your mind tells you you were looking at two particles.  Your mind can’t handle it.  If you saw a particle in two places at the same time, that means there’s got to be a relationship … and where there’s a relationship, there’s a dichotomy – two things.  Look at it this way, there’s the particle at location A and the same(!) particle at position B.  Doesn’t it have a relationship even if it’s just a relationship with itself?  hmmm.  What about its relationship with everything else?  Does it have one or two?

The game’s getting a little harder now, isn’t it?

Everything we know of, can imagine, or can name, can be said to exist if the only thing we know about it is its relationship to something else.  It really doesn’t matter how much or how little we understand or “know” about the thing, what makes it unique and distinguishes it from all the other things we could be thinking about is how it differs from some other thing.

It’s amazing but true. 

When you can tell me with confidence that you are talking about two different things, then there’s something you know about them.  If two things are different, they must have some relationship to each other.  That relationship may be tenuous, or distant, or even pretty unimportant from our point of view, nevertheless, any two things that are unique do most definitely have some kind of relationship to each other.  Our minds can’t have it any other way.

You are now a Level 1 ace.

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It’s the MoQ Game!

Posted on January 5, 2011 by ls

Are you ready?  Got the rules down?  A piece of cake, right?  Well, let’s start with a literal  no-brainer. 

Rocks. 

If you said Inorganic, you are a winner!  Rocks don’t reproduce (that we know of), and though they are often found together it would be a stretch to say they socialize.  What about rock intellect?  I’ll bet you know a few.  But to place something in a Level means you have to be able to say that it values the same things as everything else in that Level.  Since rocks don’t think, you’d be forgiven for questioning exactly how a rock could value anything at all.

But they do.  You see, what the things in a Level value are not based on a mental judgement, though I guess we do that – and since a human brain thought up the Levels in the first place…  But that gets us ahead of ourselves, so back to rocks. 

What would a rock possibly value?  It may not have a brain, but it certainly does value molecular stability.  If it weren’t for molecular stability, there wouldn’t be any rocks would there?  Imagine atoms floating around in empty space, or atomic particles: electrons, protons, and neutrons.  Where would they be without molecular stability?  A soup, right?  It’s the same all the way down.  New subatomic particles seem to get discovered by science every day, but they all have some relationship to each other, don’t they?  What if they didn’t?  What would we have then? 

So you see, rocks do value something after all.  All of them.

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A new way of looking at the world

Posted on January 5, 2011 by ls

When you first come across the MoQ you may marvel at the Levels. They comprise what business theorists sometimes call a “nifty system”. They are elegant, easy to visualize, and practically useful: they give you a quick-and-dirty way to categorize everything, and we are told that everything fits. Nothing is left out.

The Levels: 

  • Inorganic
  • Biological
  • Social
  • Intellectual

The next thing you’ll likely want to do is play the MoQ game. This is a favorite intellectual past-time of MoQ students. Quick! Try to think of something that can’t be categorized into one of the four Levels. When you realize you can’t do that start putting things in their proper place.

You can try it yourself right now.  Here are the rules:

1. Everything in the universe can be assigned to one of the four Levels.

2. You assign things to the correct Level based not on the properties of the thing, but on what that thing values.

3. Everything has its place. Nothing can end up with no Level, though some things do reside in more than one.

4. The Levels have a hierarchical or evolutionary relationship to each other.

This last rule requires some explanation. The oldest most primary Level is the Inorganic. It finds Quality in a particular set of values or morals that are unique unto itself. Successively higher levels depend on the Level(s) preceding, since without the older levels, the newer ones could not exist. But the Levels do not value the same things as those above or those below. Each has its own set of Patterns of Value (PoVs for short). Do you start to see how this works?

A question you might ask is, “What exactly does it mean to value something”?  Another might be, “What is the relationship between values, morals, and Quality, and why do you capitalize the last”?

We’ll get to all that.

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The Metaphysics of Quality

Posted on January 3, 2011 by ls

When Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values was published in 1974 it was an immediate bestseller.  It resonated with something that seemed vital to millions of people around the world.  Whether you read it for the first time in those days, or came across it later doesn’t seem to matter.  It can still grab you.

But it left its readers longing for something more. 

The shortcomings of post-modern cultures were exposed for all to see, but without a solution.  If the way we perceive the world is out of whack, then what would be better?

Those of us that take an interest in such things were left hanging until 1991.  In that year Lila: An Inquiry into Morals was published as the follow-up to Zen.  It was as good as promised, too.  He answered our questions not with suggestions, but with a full-blown metaphysics!  The Metaphysics of Quality – or “MoQ” for short – is a breed apart.  Not since the days of bearded old men in Victorian garb have we seen anyone attempt to flesh out an entirely new way of looking at the world.

It is this that I wish to discuss here.

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Hello!

Posted on January 1, 2011 by ls

LilaSquad.com is live!

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