Gilad"s shared items

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Values, Morals, Evolution, Science and Mapping

Lila (1991) is the second philosophical novel by Robert M. Pirsig, who is best known for his classic text, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In this book, Pirsig presents his metaphysics of quality or MOQ for short.

The main claim of MOQ is that our view of the world should be a moral view or valued based view. Everything in the world is seen by its value. There is an hierarchy of value domains.

  • The inorganic values - physics
  • Organic values - biology
  • Social values - law
  • Intellectual values - science, spiritual thought
And most importantly there is static and dynamic quality. The value domains are static forms of quality the were found over history. Dynamic quality is the power that pushes reality forward.

Looking on reality and our life in that form is very helpful. When I feel down I should ask myself what is the problem? Why do I experience low or bad quality. What kinds of value domains are in conflict in my life.

When trying to answer this questions is important to remember that both static and dynamic qualities are important in order to progress and grow in life. Dynamic quality could take you to wrong allies, but as long you have your static quality in place, you can do the jump of leap knowing you have your safety net behind you.