Toward Light, or Darkness?
I thought I’d share the progress of this bonsai here. The other pine tree I was growing died from the trauma of re-potting, which I think was premature on my part. This one has had no such problem, as it was originally planted in this much bigger cool-looking square pot. Compared to the other species I’ve been growing, this one has grown incredibly quickly, and gives a much greater tree feel than the others.
I really like this photo here, especially the light and the shadow. See how it looks like it is reaching towards the shadow? But it is not. This is the illusion that can often flummox us in life as well. What is right and what is wrong? How can we be sure? Cultures have differed over the ages on moral standings, and what has been wrong in the past has now become right, and vice versa. A book I recently read, “Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals”, by Robert Pirsig, shed some interesting light on this subject, most notably in marking a clear difference between social morals, biological morals, and intellectual morals. As is so often the case, we get into difficulty when our definitions of words don’t match those of the person or people we are talking to. The answer then, is to think twice before we make assumptions about what people mean, and especially when judging whether someone is moving towards the light, or towards darkness.
April 10th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
What really flummoxes me though, is that you managed to actually use “flummox” in a sentence! How do you know it’s not reaching for the shadow though? Perhaps you’ve got a goth pine! =P
Seriously though, this distinction within morals sounds interesting, could you give some examples of each moral? ‘Cause as it is I can’t quite fill them in myself, or indeed see the distinction between a cultural and an intellectual moral!
April 11th, 2006 at 8:43 am
What you really need to watch for now is if the pine starts growing black leaves, and you find pages of lyrics to Cure songs hidden in the soil..
April 11th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Hahha… You guys…
Paulo, I’d love to explain, but apparently I haven’t learnt it well enough to give such clear examples, but I will do my best to explain what I understood of his “Metaphysics of Quality”, the way he classed his type of thought and philosophy. Something I do remember, is the considered order of the different moral standings, which were based on a sort of evolution, with inorganic matter being the lowest form, then going up through biological, social, intellectual, and then Dynamic [that which causes growth as at the pinnacle of evolution, but if not tempered by the relative staticness of the other levels just descends into chaos].
We can see that a leap from single-celled to multi-celled organisms is a leap in evolution. Equally, it is a moral act for something more evolved to consume a less evolved/complex thing to survive - the animal eating the plant, the man eating the animal… Of course we need to be wary of our exact definition of evolution there. I’m sure there could be many outcries about such an idea as raising animal above plant and man above them all. I have chosen to think of it in terms not of better and worse, but simply more complex and less complex, a simple fact of position in the great cycle and chains of things. A good example of this would be that it is more moral for a man to eat to survive than just to die, and likewise more moral for a man to kill off a bacterial infection than to succumb to it.
The social then comes about, putting down rules about who can have sex with who, and who gets what share of food, etc. This is a moral act, overcoming the biological levels in us of survival of the fittest and proliferation of our own genes, etc. The tribe becomes the thing, and so these laws must be there to keep the tribe strong. This has to happen for the many to become more important than the one, in the same way the multi-celled organism became more important than the single-celled (though remember, not better or worse. We must remember that in our wording if possible). A similar thing happens with the idea of puritanical or Victorian thought. How can such things be considered evolution! Well, they served their purpose, and at the time were considered an evolved way of living over hitting women over the head with clubs and dragging them back to the cave… Then steps in science, men of intellect, and people start bowing down to a different kind of god. The rational becomes king, and that’s pretty much where we are now. An example of this particular battle between levels could well be the issues considered in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
The interesting thing about it, is that one level must be in constant conflict with the other, and even more interesting, that some levels simply can’t make any impact on others. How can the intellect quell our biological urges? This is the problem we tend to be facing, having done away with the social levels of puritanism saying they are overly strict and somehow wrong. The problem when these levels are forgotten is that a reversion must take place, and this can clearly be seen in the more dangerous and criminal areas of big cities, reverting to the relative immoral standing of the biological level, gangland and wars, without respect or fear of social/police law.
In this light of evolution, Pirsig considered the hippy era to actually be evolution, a place of freedom and rejection of the guns and might law of police systems and limits on sex and women’s power and so on. He also considered that as it didn’t catch on, it was a failed leap, because it didn’t manage to create any sense of static structure to support it. Literally, chaos can only go on so long before people want something secure again, and if something secure doesn’t develop out of that initial growth time then things revert back to how they were. However, the book was written in the 90’s, and I think now I can see that though this attempt failed to catch on completely, it didn’t go unnoticed, and things didn’t revert completely to how they were before. It seems even a failed leap is still shown in the evolution of things.
From all this, hopefully I’ve explained well enough that you can see how the obvious differences in what is moral and what isn’t from culture to culture and society to society, is actually only a small part of the overall moral question, and in particular these morals are intimately connected to the society and culture that they are part of, and so cannot really be compared in a better or worse sense, any more than you could compare two tree species or two pieces of artwork.
I’m sure I’d need to read again to make more sense of it. My explanations here are only really statements of how well I’ve understood the book, and I know that I haven’t understood completely, so it is better that you read it for yourself. I can only tell you that it changed my view on a few things, and gave me more respect for the things that have gone before.