James Shea does the introduction:

Good evening! My name is James Shea, and I am president of the HSA. The HSA is happy to see so many students and faculty in attendance tonight. I'd like to thank personally our advisor Dr. Wechsler, Amy Pfifer, the Honors secretary, and the rest of the Honors board for making this event possible.

We'll begin tonight with a presentation by Mr. Douglas Renselle. This will be followed by a brief question session followed by a reception in the lobby.

When Robert Pirsig's ZMM came out in 1974, it became an instant best seller. Why was that? What were the ideas in the novel that fascinated so many people throughout the world?

Mr. Douglas Renselle, our speaker tonight, has been a student of Pirsig's philosophy for over 20 years. He will attempt to elucidate Pirsig's philosophy which is called the MoQ. Mr. Renselle has also studied mathematics, electrical engineering, information systems and systems theory. He has founded The Quantonics Society which promotes the science of complementary [inter]relationships and research on the MoQ. The Society seeks to sponsor Ph.D. candidates studying Pirsig's philosophy and wishes to relate modern quantum science with the MoQ.

Mr. Renselle also believes that one’s real education begins after one leaves school. But he is confident that tonight will be one exception to that rule.

Please welcome Mr. Douglas Renselle.

Applause.

Doug Renselle does the presentation:

Before we begin, I want to make sure that everyone can hear if I stand over here to the side, away from the microphone. Can everyone hear me? [Agreement that they can.]

All right!

As you can see and as James said I am Doug Renselle, and I represent The Quantonics Society.

Our topic this evening is a man named Robert M. Pirsig, P-I-R-S-I-G. He wrote two books. His first book which was published in 1974, is entitled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. You are going to hear me use an acronym, ZMM, tonight for that — it is a lot easier. The second book which was published late in 1991 is entitled Lila. He also wrote a paper entitled Subjects, Objects, Data and Values, and as far as we know those are the three works.

The first book, ZMM, laid out the foundation for his work, what he calls the MoQ. It is a philosophy that Pirsig has invented. His own philosophy. Then Lila finished off unfinished work in ZMM. For example in ZMM, when he finished the book, he had left Quality undefined. So in Lila we actually see him finish that definition. In chapter 12 he tells you "It's been completely defined."

The paper SODV, came about because some physicists and theoreticians in Western Europe had read both of his books. And they thought that they saw a correlation between his philosophy, his new philosophy, and quantum science. So they asked him to come to the EMM [Einstein Meets Magritte] conference which was held in Brussels, Belgium in May of 1995 to present a paper about this and he did [Pirsig's actual presentation of the paper was on 1Jun95.]. That paper is available on the web. It's on our site and it's on The Lila Squad site.

Before we go into the details of the evening, I want to acknowledge a few organizations and people.

I want to thank you, Loyola, for seeing fit to have me here this evening. I want to thank the HSA, and the Student Activity Fund for making this possible. James, James Shea, president. Dan, Dan Neafsey, vice president, have been extraordinarily helpful.

I think it would be remiss if we failed to acknowledge how this organization got to be here in the first place. The warrior saint, St. Ignatius Loyola, founded the Jesuit order in 1534, and Pope Paul III made it official six years later in 1540.

And finally, I need to acknowledge Mr. Pirsig, himself. I've been corresponding with him for some years now, and when Pirsig was invited to come here and be with you this evening, he had already made plans to spend the Winter in Mexico. He couldn't come and he said, "Hey Doug would you do this?" And he recommended me to the HSA. So here we are.

I also want to issue some caveats.

I view us, all of us, as Homo sapiens. And I see us as having finite intellect. Our genome is finite, our intelligence is finite: when you compare our intelligence to all of the intelligence in the multiverse. We don't want to forget that. We especially don't want to forget that this evening as I speak, because I tend to get fairly excited about this material. I'm sold on this. I believe in it, OK. But, you also have to realize that I am turned on about it and I am going to say things as if they are true, and you need to take that with a grain of salt.

All right?

The other thing is that this is not Pirsig doing the presentation. He did not put this together. The graphs, the artwork are not his — It's my spin, and I believe that everyone who reads Lila and ZMM get[s] different interpretations.

What we are going to do this evening as a part of my presentation is: we are going to have a little chat. And then we are going to have a formal talk. And after the formal talk, we are going to do questions and answers.

What we would like to do, what we want to accomplish this evening, is answer these questions. So you can test me, see if I accomplished this:

• What is SOM? What is the Subject-Object Metaphysics?
• What is the Metaphysics of Quality, Pirsig's new philosophy?
• Did Pirsig really define a new philosophy?
• What are the differences between the two? SOM is the way we do things today. How is MoQ different from that?
• What is the MoQ architecture? Whenever I do things and I work with people, I like to have a single piece of paper that captures the essence of what it is we are trying to understand. In this case I call that the MoQ architecture. So there is a single slide that you will see a little later on this evening, which is that one piece of paper which shows the essence, the quintessence of the MoQ.
• What are the moral codes? I overheard conversations this evening, people talking about morality. There is another slide that has the moral codes — now I'm not going to talk about the details of the moral codes, but I'll show you where they are and give you a couple of examples that you can use to do the same kind of thinking on your own, and look into it more on your own. And then finally, and perhaps the most important for me,
• Why is Pirsig's MoQ imperative for this third millennium we are about to enter? I believe that is true, and hopefully, I'll have you moving in that direction by the end of this presentation.

The chat:

Now before we go into the formal part, I'd like to chat with you a bit.

I want to start out by saying, "How do we think today?" Now what do I mean by that, "How do we think today?" About whom am I speaking? I am speaking about Western culture. The kind of culture we have in the US. The kind of culture we have in some parts of Western Europe. I am not talking about Eastern philosophy or any of that kind of thing. Pirsig calls that [how we think today], "SOM." So, how do we think?

Let me give you a few examples:  true versus false, right versus wrong, black versus white, up versus down, determinate versus indeterminate. What are we hearing here? That word 'versus,' right? That word 'versus' is a side-choosing word. It says, "Hey Doug, you stand on this side of the fence, or you stand on this side of the fence, and if you stand on this side of the fence you have to decide this is the way I believe and whoever stands on the other side of the fence — they are not so good, because they don't believe the way I do. It's a pugilistic word. It's a head-banging word. It's about contradiction.

OK.

That is, from my perspective, and what I hear Pirsig saying, a fundamental problem with SOM, the Subject-Object Metaphysics. That same kind of thing has permeated throughout our religions and throughout our science. Modern science today depends upon the absence of contradiction to achieve provisional proof. The word contradiction is very fundamental here.

OK, so we've got a little bit of foundation there.

Now let's do a little bit of Pirsig's stuff. I'll try to share with you some of the things he says.

First of all he calls the bundle of ISMs — all of the ISMs that have to do with Subject both/and Object or Subject either/or Object — all those ISMs are lumped into what he calls SOM. And in particular he's talking about the ones that place objective thought at the apex of the philosophy. So you can recognize SOM ISMs that way. The ones he's concerned about are the ones that say, "The objective is the way to go."

He tells us that about 2500 years ago we sort of already had the kind of thing that he is trying to achieve with this new philosophy. And it was called Sophism. Along came these guys named Parmenides, Socrates, Aristotle, and a few others. And they gave us what we have today — the legacy SOM. "This is a legacy culture we of Western culture live with and think by today." Those philosophers gave us substance — solid stuff as the basis of SOM. They taught us that everything is either substance or not substance. Mind or matter, objective or subjective. Again, the versus kind of thing, the either/or kind of thing. [See: The Birth of SOM]

They taught us an assumed schism [sizm] or 's[k]ism' between subject and object. That's what that graphic I displayed earlier was trying to show. And they taught us that that is our SOM reality.

Pirsig teaches us that SOM is about substantial facts — things that can be proven true or false. SOM is about truth. He teaches us that the SOM reality is inadequate.

He says there is a larger philosophy which encompasses SOM. And that larger philosophy is his MoQ. The new philosophy.

In comparison, now, comparing the MoQ — the Metaphysics of Quality — to the Subject-Object Metaphysics, Pirsig tells us that MoQ is about Quality. It's about goodness and value. It's about good becoming better. That's fundamental — that's fundamental. MoQ is about Goodness.

[MoQ:] Good is about interrelationships among things.

[SOM:] Truth is about properties of things.

So SOM says that this substantial stuff has properties that are down inside of it. And Pirsig says that what he calls patterns of value have interrelationships of value among and between them. So the difference here is [SOM] properties inside objects, and MoQ things, values — interrelating, as patterns of value.

He asks us to intuit, to see, to understand that truth, the thing that SOM worships — truth is a subspecies of good.

So in the MoQ philosophy, goodness is at the apex and truth is down here below it [uses gestures here]. And it's just the opposite in SOM. In SOM — SOM says truth is at the apex of the philosophy, and goodness is a subspecies. So there is a big difference. If you noticed on that animation I had, you saw the subject and object merge, value encompassed subject and object, and subject and object ended up being unified inside of value. And that is what that animation was supposed to show. [See:  SOM to sVo to SOQ]

Now, Value!

How can we stop thinking about properties and start thinking about value? I've tried to come up with some good examples. And the best one that I could come up with is related to this other area that I am interested in and that is the quantum science area.

Think of a violin. Picture in your mind a violin. Picture the body of the violin. It's being created, it's being assembled. And imagine the goodness of that violin in terms of the component parts of the violin body having to fit together. So the interrelationships among those parts that make up the violin body are crucial.

All right.

So if those are really good relationships, we'll have a really good, high value violin body.

And then imagine over here on our work bench we have a pile of strings, violin strings, they are in a heap. Fairly low value compared to where they are going to be. And then let's imagine taking those violin strings one at a time, bringing them over to the violin body one at a time and mounting them — forming an interrelationship between the string and the violin body. And [imagine] doing that with the rest of the strings. Then imagine us tuning the violin, and forming a more high value relationship between the strings and the violin body, in terms of their tuning, and the interrelationships among the individual strings. Each of those steps — that we did that — we added value by improving, by doing something about the interrelationships — not about the properties of the strings, not about the properties of the wood that make up the violin body.

OK.

Now, let's go one step further. The bow, the horsehair, the tautness relationship of the horsehair mounted in the bow. Imagine the expert violinist — who really knows how to play a violin superbly. And the repertoire of fine violin music. [gesture pointing to head] And the interrelationship of the violinist, and the tuned violin, and the bow, and the repertoire…and the value you get from that…the beautiful music.

That's the best example that I have to show you in my repertoire — of what Value is in the MoQ.

There are some other ones that are fairly simple. If you read Lila, you'll find there is an example in there that he uses of someone sitting on a hot stove. And right away you find out what value is, OK. Because you get off of the stove, without thinking about it. So we know where the Value is.

He tells us that every child knows what Value is. Those of you who are parents and have had a one and one-half year-old out in the kitchen opening the cabinets and pulling out the pots and pans and banging things together and denting them and chipping the enamel off of your fine stuff. And you as a well-trained SOMite, observing this, are worshiping your objects which are being damaged. And yet, the child is experiencing pure Dynamic Quality.

And what about Michael Jordan? Great big tall Michael Jordan. Imagine Michael — somebody has decided to give him a gift. A Yugo. And Michael goes out and tries to get in the Yugo. Do we have a high Value interrelationship here? No! We don't! If it were a Rolls Corniche, maybe better, OK.

The Internet is a wonderful example. Think about the infrastructure that makes up the Internet. Wires, cables, modems, satellite links, microwave links, …, all that stuff, right. That's not where the Value is. The Value is in the potential infinite interrelationships among all the people and organizations who are on the Internet.

That's basically my bit on Value.

That's foundation.

If you can't get what Pirsig is saying about Value, then the rest of the MoQ doesn't — doesn't make a lot of sense. So if I've got you along, if you think you've got that, we're going to be OK.

In essence, it is crucial to see Value as: interrelationships among all the things that we know.

Given that, let's start on the fundamentals, let's go through the Pirsig fundamentals.

The Pirsig Fundamentals:

[Show the first transparency of the formal part of the presentation.]

OK.

SOM compared to MoQ Pirsig fundamentals:

I took three words: reality, value, and truth, and I examined each of those words under the MoQ and the SOM.

[SOM Reality:]

What does SOM say about reality? Reality, in SOM says, substance is real. This hard stuff [gesture with closed fist represents substance] you can touch and feel and objectively observe and measure. That's real. This is real [lifting the stool]. Your cup is real. Your car is real. That's [SOM] reality!

[SOM Value:]

What does SOM say about value? It says that substance contains properties [gesture with other hand pushing inside closed fist to show properties].

[SOM Truth:]

What does SOM say about truth. Oh let's see, I am skipping some stuff here…Also it says in SOM that properties pre-exist, they have always been there as stable properties. And also, this is a big one, SOM says, that science, classical science is value free. [In SOM] We seek the truth and we don't care about what it considers to be subjective[value], we throw it away, we go out and try to make it go away. [SOM says truth is at the apex of its Philosophy.] That's SOM.

[MoQ Reality:]

Now, in comparison, MoQ says about reality, that Value is real.

SOM has a schism — subjects and objects bumping heads — SOM.

[gesture with both hands closed-fisted with thumbs down, banging fists together to represent SOM]

MoQ says, that Value is real — says that Value surrounds and interpenetrates the known. So everything that we know [gesturing with open hands] — this is what we know, and they are like this [fingers loosely commingled]. So we have the MoQ versus the SOM. [gesture with both hands closed-fisted with thumbs down to represent SOM compared to open hands, fingers loosely commingled with thumbs pointing up to represent MoQ]

So we have the MoQ versus the SOM. That's the big difference, right there. MoQ says about reality, Value is real.

Interrelationships:

• Michael Jordan getting in his Yugo.
• The violin interrelationships.
• The Internet interrelationships.

[MoQ commingled fingers hand gesture]

[MoQ Value:]

And, that reality creates Value. All the stuff that we know. Everything that you can think of — has been created by Value, by quality. Value surrounds and interpenetrates the known. We are in it. We are in it right now. What you can't see. We are in it.

[MoQ Truth:]

Truth. And again, we have already said this but Value is up here [apex] in the MoQ and truth is down here [below, demoted]. And compared to SOM, which says that truth is at the apex and value is down here [demoted].

Pirsig fundamentals.

OK Doug, "What is SOM?" Can you define it?

All right.

SOM is the current as-practiced, Western ISM catch-all way of examining Reality.

SOM divides Reality two ways: Subject and Object. Objects are observables we sense as substantial Reality. Subjects are mind forms we intuit as insubstantial Reality. Lower value. SOM is Subjects and Objects co-existing with very, very limited interrelationships. And I am using this little symbol [v] which is sort of like a compass, pointing in all directions to manifest interrelationships.

All right Doug, "What is MoQ?"

MoQ is a way of examining Reality, which defines Quality as an analog of Reality.

Pirsig says, "Quality is Reality."

MoQ is, defined: Quality creating Value — [creating] What we know.

Everything that we know has been created by Quality. That's usually the hard part for people to see.

MoQ is: Quality equals Reality, and we've got something new now, [MoQ] split into two divisions:

• Dynamic Quality (DQ), and
• Static Quality (SQ).

SQ is everything that we know. It's the latched part of reality.

What latched basically means is when something comes to be real [actual]. It gets latched. And then, usually what will happen is — DQ is working on it all the time, trying to get it to change, and it will latch up or down to a new state. Usually it latches up, to a new state. We try to improve things.

So you can imagine here, working on your report, in biology. And you have done the rough draft. And so the draft is latched. And then you do some more work on it and it latches at a new higher value state than it was before. You can imagine the same thing happening in biology. How did we get here? Evolution went through this process of SQ latches of biological materials at better, and better, and better levels.

DQ creates, interrelates, and changes SQ.

So MoQ is DQ creating and changing SQ.

Pirsig fundamentals.

Let's go into a little bit more detail about SQ and DQ.

[Static Quality]

Pirsig says, "SQ is everything that we know." SQ is things, ideas, and their interrelationships. SQ is what we know in interrelationships with what we know. SQ, and this is important, the concept of the latch — SQ gets itself latched and it tries to stay there. Wants to stay there [wants to stay realized or actualized].

[Dynamic Quality]

He calls SQ’s complement DQ.

So this is a little bit like Subject and Object. Over in the SOM realm. We talk about substance first. And then we say everything that is not substance is non-substance. Everything that is not an Object is a Subject.

All right.

So in the MoQ, he says that DQ is everything that is not SQ. So it's [SQ] the known, everything we know, the known, and the unknown. SQ is the known. DQ is the unknown. He says DQ interpenetrates and commingles SQ. So we get something like this [gesture of loosely coupled hands with thumbs up], not a schism, not an either/or kind of thing [gesture with clenched fists and thumbs down banging fists together to show the pugilistic, head-banging nature of SOM] that we have in SOM, but a commingling.

He tells us that DQ provides Value, increasing Value, by DQ in interrelationships with SQ. And, DQ promotes change. So we are going to get change, whether we like it or not, in the MoQ. It's built in. It's there. And we are also going to have patterns [SQ] resisting that change.

Gotcha, Doug.

You defined the MoQ, and you defined SQ, but you didn't define DQ.

Well, that's a key element to the Metaphysics of Quality. He basically says to us, that everyone knows what it is, everyone recognizes it, but no one — and you remember my remark earlier about finite intellect — so I have a little footnote here that refers to finite sentient intellect — no one can define it.

And if you disagree, then try it. I am going to give you a few examples here in a moment. And when I give you those examples, see if you can tell, figure out in your head, how that happens. How does that DQ happen? What is it? What's doing that?

Pirsig tried, and tried, and tried and went crazy in the process. If you've read ZMM, you know about that. And we wiped his…we SOMites wiped his gray matter because he didn't fit our culture...right?!

So we can describe DQ, but we cannot define it.

A lot of people describe it with these phrases:

The Quality Event. I think that phrase perhaps first appeared in ZMM. And Bo Skutvik who is on The Lila Squad, he wrote a paper that's out there on TLS, called "The Quality Event."

The Edge of Now. What that little one and one-half year-old was experiencing in the kitchen with the pots and pans. Right on the edge of now. That's DQ.

Direct Experience. You've heard of a guy named Feynman? Richard Feynman? Physicist, very famous physicist. He's the guy that took the rubber seal from the booster rocket on the Challenger that exploded. And dipped it in his ice water, and held it up and broke it. And showed that was what was wrong.

Well, Feynman has a model for time, sort of like a lazy X model. [gesture with index fingers crossed to make an 'X'] Where over on the left is the past, and in the middle here at the intersection is now, and over here on the right is the future. And time flows, in this model, from the past, through now, to the future. Pirsig's DQ, Direct Experience, is just between now and the future — it's right in there [gesture pointing to between now and future]. Riding right on that edge.

So we can define, I'm sorry, we can describe the surface of DQ.

So let me give you some examples:

Imagine a roller coaster. Let's say you like to ride roller coasters. And there is this new one that you have never been on before, and it has some really kinky things in it, OK. And you get on this roller coaster, and you take the ride and it does things to you that you have never experienced before. That's DQ. That's what he is talking about.

Another example is, about 20 years ago, Chuck Mangione, came out with an album called Bellavia. And the first time I heard the tune Bellavia, it seemed to resonate with my being. It seemed to go to the very core of me.

Later, or more recently, Clapton's unplugged CD. He had a tune on there, it was the second version he did of Layla. And that one may have affected you that way. That's DQ…experiencing that.

Now you'll also notice when you listen to that tune you really like, the first time, you experience the DQ. And the second time it's still pretty good, but it's not as good. And by the tenth time, you can put it aside for awhile, right?! Well that is Value transforming from DQ into a static pattern — a latched pattern, something that you recognize.

OK.

This is basically a repeat now.

So my line up at the top there says, "Is this bad?" Is this wrong that we left part of the MoQ undefined? He's defined it as definable SQ in interrelationships with undefinable DQ.

Well there is precedent for that. Our SOM science does that. If you look at the three things that are at the very bottom of classical science, mass, length, and time, they are the same way. None of those categories is definable in terms of anything any more fundamental than that. Except people usually don't tell you that when you take your first physics course. Maybe they do here at Loyola. So there is precedent.

But the way I look at this is as follows. I've studied a little bit on Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, and one of the things that's left off of Gödel's Incompleteness theorem is an ellipsis. And the ellipsis says, "…all the rest of everything." So his theorem seems to be trapped in a SOM world and he leaves off the rest of everything which is the unknown. [See: The Memes, the Decidable Gödel meme.]

And so what Pirsig has done is very powerful. He says right up front that the unknown is an intrinsic element of the MoQ. Very, very powerful. It helps the MoQ to be more complete. I thought when I read in chapter 12 of Lila — that [when] he said it [MoQ] was complete — I thought I had found a contradiction. But the way he gets around that — the way I think about how he gets around that — is by including the unknown.

Tell us more about SQ.

Basically all this says is that he has broken up one of the divisions of the MoQ, SQ, into four levels:  the top level is what he calls intellectual Static Patterns of Value [SPoVs], below that social, biological, and at the bottom inorganic. Those four levels.

He says that they are Static Patterns of Value. And that these SPoVs are co-within, co-within DQ.

Now you remember I said earlier, at the very beginning, that there was one slide that showed the architecture of the Metaphysics of Quality. This is that slide. And I want to spend some time on this because there is a really good example, perhaps, you can relate to here.

Does everybody, still...can you hear…can you hear me back in the back, because I would like to stand away here.

OK.

We know now, the MoQ says simply, Reality equals Quality equals undefinable DQ in interrelationships with definable SQ.

OK.

And that Static Quality is made up of four SPoV layers: intellectual, social, biological, and inorganic. One of the things we can see on this architecture diagram is the transformation, or a part of the transformation from the SOM to the MoQ.

So I find this very helpful for me, and hopefully for you. You'll notice now, you remember when we started out that we said that SOM says that truth is up on top and that value is down here some place. And that the MoQ says just the opposite. Value is at the apex of the philosophy and that truth is a subspecies of Value.

But notice now that in the MoQ the subjective SPoVs have moved to the top.

[Note:  In MoQ, the equivalent of SOM's (artificial/incorrect/exclusive) subjective division of reality is more highly evolved (higher value) than the (artificial/incorrect/exclusive) objective division of SOM. Once you see this, you sense one of the most fundamental flaws in the SOM depiction of reality. This is very, very, very important for anyone who wants to visualize why we must move from SOM to MoQ!]

[See:  MoQ Architecture]

They are no longer denigrated. They are revered [as more highly evolved] in the MoQ as compared to the SOM. In SOM this is just the opposite [SOM reveres its least highly evolved division—one reason why MoQites claim, "SOM is stuck!"]. In MoQ the subjective is the thing that is the most important, the highest Value.

Now, as a practicing MoQite we don't want to use words like Subject and Object. The reason we don't want to do that is because it takes us back into SOMland. And the ones of us who are really trying to do that [become MoQites] want to stay out of SOMland. But we can't because all the rest of you are in SOMland, and we are trying to help you get out. So we have to do this kind of stuff to help you get out.

OK.

All right.

One of the things MoQ does is that it unifies Subjects and Objects as a class: SPoVs. It does that. That's a big deal. That's a real big deal.

And I already told you about Object over Subject and Subject over Object. [On the slide.]

Another thing you need to notice here is that we show Value as evolving…higher…to the higher Value SPoVs.

So in the beginning…if we want to talk about way back in the beginning…there were things even below these inorganic SPoVs which get lumped into the inorganic SPoVs: elements and pre-element kinds of things which came together out of Quality. They became Value, patterns of Value, and formed what we now call today the elements, the 115 or 118 elements. I don't remember how many elements that make up the inorganic SPoVs. And then those inorganic SPoVs…Quality pushed them together…got them sort of commingling with each other and they formed biological SPoVs. And then those formed their groups, right, and started to realize we have some Value interrelationship problems here. We are going to have to work on these. And so they started forming social SPoVs. And then finally the social SPoVs invented the intellectual SPoVs. And that's the word Pirsig uses. He says that the lower levels, each lower level, invented the higher level. He tells us that.

Now, I want to use an example here that is unique to our situation this evening and this presentation, and it's unique to the Catholic church.

This is a good example.

And on the next slide I am going to give you a comparatively bad example.

And I don't mean any offense here. I am just trying to show you how we can use the MoQ to think a new way about problems that we have.

All right?

Let's just say for a minute, if you know the story of Iñigo de Oñez y Loyola, St. Ignatius Loyola, the warrior Saint. He founded the Society of Jesus, the Company of Jesus. Loyola was a warrior. He fought. And as he got toward middle age he decided, "Hey! This is not at good thing!"

And so he got interested in the Church...started reading about the Church. And he got some of his own ideas. And he sort of built a new pattern of intellectual values that he thought would help the Church. And he started talking about those within the people he worked with, the young men in the priesthood, the priests, the bishops, the other powerful people.

And at that time the Catholic church was going through what was called the Inquisition. And believe it or not, the Church had set up a very rigid social SPoV structure, dogma, doctrine, rules. And that's how they enforced the Inquisition...was by following that dogma and that doctrine.

And along comes this smart-aleck guy with new ideas about how to change the Church. And remember we said SPoVs tend to resist change? Well they didn't want to change. So people started accusing him of bad things. So what we have here is new [intellectual] ideas being rejected by this static [social] pattern that is trying to hold still. "We've got this, we like it, and we want to stay here."

So, in the movie that I rented from one of the churches in Dayton, it shows him in front of the tribunal and he's about ready to be lashed, with this thorn bush, with these great big thorns, on this bush, and at the very last moment, a bishop, or some high authority in the Church walks in and saves him.

Now that's good. What happened there was the social structure saw the goodness of this better pattern of Value. Recognized it, and actually resulted in this society for which this school is standing today. We wouldn't be here today, if that authority hadn't come in and rescued him from the Inquisition.

All right. I wanted to share that example. Now on to the next slide…

We are going to do something similar, but we don't come out with as nice a story.

In Lila — this was not done in ZMM — in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Pirsig didn't get into moral codes at all. [he did] In Lila — you need to read it.

I don't have time this evening to go through all this with you. There are a lot of these in Lila. And if you go out on The Lila Squad you'll see lots of people talking about these, and what they should be, and how they should be.

All right.

But basically, moral code number one governs the interrelationships among DQ and all that we know, SQ — in the four levels. It governs that. And the basic rules here are: 

DQ has the right to impose change, and SQ has the right to resist change.

Nice balance here, right? Pretty good stuff…pretty good stuff.

There is a lot more to it than that. I am working on a set of these that I can put on the Quantonics Web Site, that you'll actually be able to see my interpretation of what these should be, taking some of Pirsig's words and distilling it down to one page. [See:  MoQ Moral Codes]

OK.

Let's talk about moral code number two.

Now, there is a moral code…he has five of them…there is a moral code between each of the SPoV layers.

All right.

And basically, again, at each level it [a moral code] governs the interrelationships.

Let's just talk about this level right here, the one between intellectual and social. It basically says that the intellectual SPoVs have to recognize that the level below, the social SPoVs, invented it. All right. And, it supports it. So anything that's done up here [at the intellectual level] can't destroy this [the social] layer. So that [rule] goes in this moral code here [moral code number two].

The intellectual SPoVs have the moral responsibility not to destroy the [social] foundation they are standing on. I can sort of see this guy standing on this big platform 300 feet in the air with a chain saw cutting a circle [in the floor] around himself. Right. That's sort of the picture you get in your mind of what's happened in our country. Right. Where we've basically knocked out Victorian culture, and what we have today is intellectual SPoVs in interrelationships with biological SPoVs [without social level mediation], and the negative effects of that. We see that right up at the top of our leadership of our country today.

Now, I want to give you another example here.

This will probably be a little bit quicker. You're probably familiar with this one.

A hundred years after Loyola, [in] 1633, after the Jesuit order was founded, there was a guy named Galileo. And he had studied Copernicus’ works and said, "This is pretty good stuff." And he was writing about it, and teaching about it, and publishing about it. And the Catholic church said, "Unh-uh!" That doesn't jibe with our social dogma [pointing at the social level] of the Church. And they went after him. And you know what happened. They forced him to recant. They persecuted him intellectually.

So with Loyola you have an example of an insider being allowed to introduce new social SPoVs, but with Galileo, who was an outsider from the world of science, and was threatening, or being perceived as threatening to the Church, was persecuted. So basically, we need to remember now, that the lower levels invent and support each subsequent layer up, and we need to remember that the higher ones dominate and simultaneously need the lower levels. [Pointing at the highest level — intellectual] Higher moral value, higher moral responsibility, higher moral right. Same between these two, these two, these two [pointing to pairs of succeedingly lower levels].

So basically that's it, except I want to sort of wrap it up.

I want to talk about why we need MoQ for Millennium III.

And to me, if there is any message I can give you this evening that's important, from my perspective, this is the big one, and I hope I can make the point.

The SOM mindset is inadequate for the next millennium. If we keep using the way we think today when we move to the next millennium, we are going to be in trouble. We will not achieve as much improvement in the next millennium with SOM as we will if we use MoQ, or something like MoQ.

All right.

MoQ mindset is better. It better meets the need.

How can we benchmark this?

You remember I said earlier that there were some fellows over in Western Europe, some theoreticians and scientists, some quantum scientists. When they asked him to present that paper at the conference in Brussels, that was very, very important. They saw what a lot of other people are seeing. And what they saw is that MoQ is the philosophy that goes with the new science. And if you read both of his books, you'll see, it's not the philosophy that goes with our current classical science, Newtonian physics. It doesn't go with Newtonian physics. But, it goes with quantum science.

The way I benchmarked it was, I studied Pirsig's work. And then, I took it and I tried to diagram it. And when I diagrammed it, I kept seeing quantum stuff in here [in the diagram]. So I sent him a picture of it.

[See:  MoQ Architecture. This is very close to, and more correct than the original I sent to him, FYE.]

And he sent me the SODV paper back:  Subjects, Objects, Data, and Values, the one which was presented. And it is all about that relationship [the one between MoQ and quantum science].

[See:  Pirsig's SODV. This is the paper he presented.]

So, what I have discovered in my own work in quantum science, and I am at a cursory level, I'm not at a detail level — I can't write wave equations and work in Hilbert space, and that stuff. I'm not that good. But I understand up here at a high level — but I can tell you from my work, from what I know, that the MoQ is the philosophy that goes with the new science. SOM is a dual for the old Newtonian thought. MoQ is a dual for the new quantum thought.

I've got one last little thing here. Hopefully my final selling point.

And that is:  Have you heard of a guy named W. Edwards Deming? The founder of quality control in the US. Statistical quality control. Born, raised, and educated in the USA. Invented this new system of manufacturing process control, in the first half of this century.

He went to our corporations, and said, "Look at this, look at what we can do with this." They said, "Naaaggghhh. You don't know what You're talking about. Go away. Leave us alone. Status quo is the way to go."

Does that sound like SOM? Static. Stuck. Status quo is not the way to go.

OK.

So what did he do? Deming took his ideas and went to Japan. And they opened their arms, and took him in, and embraced him. Established the Deming Prize. You know what they did to us? They kicked our butts! They took a huge segment of our automotive marketplace. What we call the rust belt today? That's part of the reason. OK. They took all of our electronics except for Personal Computers. Took it all. Gone. We ignored our own…our own pioneer. We tossed out our own pioneer.

Now, just a little bit of fear. I'd like to get a little bit of concern in your minds right now. I think this is a really big thing. I really do.

We are doing the same thing to Pirsig. We are telling him, "You don't know what you're talking about. Go away. Leave us alone. SOM is the way to go. Status quo is the way to go. We've been doing it for 2500 years, and we need to keep on doing this, because we know how to do this."

And you know what's happening? It's happening again. The Japanese, the Eastern countries…are getting into the MoQ.

Who has, as far as I know, the first MoQ Ph.D. candidacyship in the world today?

It's not here!

Who's doing research in this stuff?

It's not here!!

MoQ — a new philosophy for Millennium III.

[Doug Renselle and The Quantonics Society wish to thank Mr. Pirsig and Loyola University Chicago for this opportunity to spread the message of The New Philosophy.]

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©Quantonics, Inc., 1998-2010 — Rev. 5Oct2008  PDR — Created 4Jun1998  PDR
(4Nov2000 rev - Add anchor to beginning of chat, 'How We Think Today.')
(13Aug2002 rev - Add 'graphic' SOM-SOQ animation link to early part of chat.)
(2Dec2002 rev - Add anchor to our final Deming caveat comments.)
(20Jun2007 rev - Add 'DQ Becoming SQ' anchor.)
(5Oct2008 rev - Add 'Doug's Caveats' anchor. Slightly reformat.)

 

 

 

 

 

"Knowledge IS the highest value. All Error originates essentially in a lack of knowledge. Egotism has the same source. But having knowledge must be distinguished from knowing facts. There is an important factor that distinguishes true knowledge from knowledge of material facts. A true knowledge can not be learned only from books, can not be learned at universities. It must ALSO be felt, it must be internally experienced. It comes as a revelation, as a gift - where from we do not know - to a fearless seeker."

Arkadiusz Jadczyk, author of "Quantum Future Metaphysics."