She's a judge!

From a biological perspective men and women have very different needs and I'm not so sure our shared cultures have fully come to terms with this fact.

Generally speaking, evolutionarily, a man's needs are very simple, whilst a woman’s a bit more complex. Rather than simply a partner with obvious aesthetically genetic beauty; as a judge - women choose what behaviours and traits a man needs to display for those traits to continue and ensure the survival of our species.

Below Robert Pirsig talks about the need for a man to ensure he can satisfy her in any way she deems necessary. But what are those requirements she creates? Are there some traits in men that the majority of women - consciously or otherwise - look for? Perhaps there are biological traits that all women look for because it gives them hints that he will be able to provide for them, provide safety, and ensure the survival of their offspring?

And if that's the case, then is the commonality and biological nature of those traits fully appreciated and understood by our culture? Or is it that because our culture doesn't use the Metaphysics of Quality, they're not appreciated and fully understood?

This is the question that I want to answer in a future post. It's a moral question because it gets to the heart of the types of questions the Metaphysics Quality shows its strength in answering. It will allow us to easily distinguish between biological value and social value and then to use intellect to find the best solution. A solution which would appreciate that biological quality exists and yet lights the way to the the moral and intelligent way of dealing with it. But for now - enjoy the below beautiful quote from Pirsig in Lila..

"From the cells' point of view sex is pure Dynamic Quality, the highest Good of all.. This same attraction which is now so morally condemned is what created the condemners.

Talk about ingratitude. These bodies would still be a bunch of dumb bacteria if it hadn't been for sexual quality. When mutation was the only means of genetic change, life sat around for three billion years, doing almost no changing at all. It was sexual selection that shot it forward into the animals and plants we have today. A bacterium gets no choice in what its progeny are going to be, but a queen bee gets to select from thousands of drones. That selection is Dynamic. In all sexual selection, Lila chooses, Dynamically, the individual she wants to project into the future. If he excites her sense of Quality she joins him to perpetuate him into another generation, and he lives on. But if he's unable to convince her of his Quality - if he's sick or deformed or unable to satisfy her in some way - she refuses to join him and his deformity is not carried on.

Now Phaedrus was really awake. Now he felt he was at some sort of source. Was this thing that he had seen tonight the same thing that he had glimpsed in the streetcar, the thing that had been bothering him all these years? He thought about it for a long time and slowly decided that it probably was..

Lila is a judge. That's who lay here beside him tonight: a judge of hundreds of millions of years' standing, and in the eyes of this judge he was nobody very important. Almost anyone would do, and most would do better than he.

After a while he thought, maybe that's why the famous 'Gioconda Smile' in the Louvre, like Lila's smile in the streetcar, has troubled viewers for so many years. It's the secret smile of a judge who has been overthrown and suppressed for the good of social progress, but who, silently and privately, still judges.

'Sad Sack.' That was the term she used. It had no intellectual meaning, but it had plenty of meaning nevertheless. It meant that in the eyes of this biological judge all his intelligence was some kind of deformity. She rejected it. It wasn't what she wanted. Just as the patterns of intelligence have a sense of disgust about the body functions, the patterns of biology, so do Lila's patterns of biology have a disgust about the patterns of intelligence. They don't like it. It turns them off."

A Cultural Values Series: #1 COMPETITION

This post is the first of a series of short intellectual analysis of different values. Competition is somewhat misunderstood and misused as a value within our culture. As with most values it's understood within our culture by the myths that support it. Below is a Metaphysics Of Quality (MOQ) based investigation into this value and a key myth that forms our modern day understanding of it...

Like to compete? I don't. Too numerous a time have I been hurt by someone competing without realising we were even doing so. Competition at the wrong time can bring down even the staunchest of competitors when, without realising, after trusting his teammate, he is suddenly blindsided by highly competitive and selfish behavior.

But beyond this kind of once off usurping of usually good competitors - constant competition within the workplace or within teams can be detrimental to team members mental health and physical wellbeing. Propagating continual stress and fear of losing out is not a good environment to be around and yet my experience is that it infects many a workplace and teams..

And so for this reason, I'd like to delve into this value some more and gain a better idea of the good and bad of competition and what, if any, insight the Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) can bring..

As I see it there's two good things about competition.

1. Competition supports the fact we are social creatures who value social status.
   We cannot ignore social values and the inherent social rankings that go with them. As human beings who are social creatures it is only natural that we enjoy a certain amount of competition and the potential increases in social standing that go with them. Therefore it's about finding the right kinds of competition that are 'healthy' and those that are not. Competition between teams for instance; with the right playful attitude can be very healthy and productive. That is whilst still allowing for intra-team or intra-company co-operation and all of the shared social and cultural benefits that go with it as well.
   But to be clear what it does not support is selfish individuals acting only for their own benefit at the expense of the larger group or team. Using the language of the MOQ - that is called putting ones own social standing or celebrity status above that of the team when it doesn't make intellectual sense to do so. In other words; that is called valuing social quality over intellectual quality and is immoral in the MOQ.

2. Competition that comes about as a result of opening up a system is a secondary good to its openness.
   By avoiding groupthink or group polarisation, and opening up a system whereby different solutions can be created to a problem; the best solution will then be able to naturally arise. Once this has occured - each of the solutions could be said to be competing but that isn't necessarily a motivation for these 'competitors' and isn't necessary for different options to be proposed.

Capitalism actually works in this very way. It's not the fact that companies are competing with a love for the social value of competition that capitalism works (although this can help with the right kind of competition as described above in the first example). It's because capitalism is more open to Dynamic Quality and simply allows for multiple solutions to the same problem to arise. From those solutions it then has a built in monetary mechanism for rewarding the best solution.

Which brings us finally to the key modern day myth of 'selfish capitalism' that underpins many an immoral intra-company competitors thinking. It also happens to be a key myth which at least most layman have heard of and understand regarding captialism. And as I will explain it is an understanding that without moral context - allows the propagator to get away with immoral behavior.

'Selfish capitalism' - a myth named which, whilst not named this way by its proponents, is essentially what it is. This myth has a person, who is a ruthless competitor and who is only out for themselves, and who will do just about anything and break just about any moral code, all in the name of money.

This is the strength of capitalism a neoliberal might tell you. A kind of individual John Galt figure out against the world.

'A person who is only out for himself, competing, and succeeding, gaining celebrity and money. For how could they succeed any other way? Isn't that what capitalism is all about? Competition? Breaking and bending rules is all part of the game!'

A standard modern day capitalist.

But this myth with its roots in the value of competition - neglects the first good of the importance of healthy co-operation and the morality of respecting the health of the team and not valuing ones own social status over the team. And it completely ignores the second good whereby different solutions to a problem arise not directly because of competition but because capitalism is more open to Dynamic Quality than any of its alternatives!

But from this investigation we can see that the Metaphysics of Quality can morally support a new myth! One still of an individual within a capitalist system. But rather than selfishly competing - is healthily competitive yet isn't driven just by this competition; they know what's right and wrong; they appreciate that there's more to live for than money and social status; and also they can see the old myth for what it is and was - logically immoral.

Logically and Morally Guiding Political Correctness

In the absence of a metaphysics which places morality at its core - it's been necessary for our culture to have a traditional conception of political correctness to keep discrimination in check. Without some kind of contraints on our language to act as a continual reminder to treat others with dignity and respect - our culture would not have made the advancements it has in terms of improving the rights and wellbeing of minorities.

However, our culture is going through a bit of a re-evaluation of its relationship with political correctness. And I can identify three causes for this:

One. It has started to be taken too far. Originally intended to protect the minority - certain minorities have begun to make unreasonable demands seeing themselves as victims requiring continual and overly dependent support.

Two. Having spent the majority of the last 50 or so years on improving social injustice issues, american politics has neglected the importance of social equality and the rich/poor divide. Therefore this gap has grown so far that the disadvantaged and poor are fed up with the focus on Political Correctness and rightly see an exclusive focus on this as part of the problem. Recognising this trajectory - this was predicted by Rorty in his book Leftist Thought in the 21st Century, 1998:

"One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet."

Richard Rorty - Leftist Thought in the 21st Century, 1998.

Three. With our current metaphysics we're unable to easily determine the line between protecting what's good about a minority and validily criticising it from the standpoint of our culture so that it can assimilate into our culture. Whilst the Metaphysics of Quality doesn't resolve these disputes once and for all - it provides us with a beautiful logical language to discuss these issues.

For example, the MOQ provides us with a clear distinction between biological people and the cultural values with which they identify. One of those things does not matter and cannot change, but the other does matter and can change. Criticism of that which can change for something better is considered moral in the MOQ. Whilst criticism of a person simply, for example, because of the color of their skin is logically racist, evil and immoral.

So the general solution isn't to throw away the value of Political Correctness. As mentioned - it's moral and supported by the MOQ. Instead we should aim to solve these problems in a different way. Solving cause One would likely be with certain education reforms and certainly reform the way we have traditionally taught discrimination resolution.

Solving cause Two isn't to throw away political correctness but to simultaneously tackle social income inequality at the same time. In fact oftentimes, it's minorities who are economically disadvantaged as well - thus tackling both of these problems will likely take pressure off them as scapegoats for a suffering majority. This will also also improve their social mobility with a smaller wage gap between them and their neighbours.

Finally, solving cause Three would involve further cultural dialogue using the moral language of the MOQ to guide us in a better, moral direction.