Key Concepts in the MoQ

The Mystic's Argument
"Thought is not a path to reality.  It sets obstacles in that path because
when you try to use thought to approach something that is prior to thought
your thinking does not carry you toward that something.  It carries you away
from it." pg. 73

"Positivism is a philosophy that emphasizes science as the only source of
knowledge.  It sharply distinguishes between fact and value, and is hostile
to religion and traditional metaphysics."  It is an outgrowth of empiricism,
the idea that all knowledge must come from experience..." pg. 75

"The Metaphysics of Quality 'restates' the empirical basis of logical
positivism with more precision, more inclusiveness, more explanatory power
than it has previously had... Values are 'more' empirical, in fact, than
subjects or objects." pg. 75

"What the Metaphysics of Quality would do is take this separate category,
Quality, and show how it contains within itself both subjects and
objects....Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world..." pg. 76

"Because Quality 'is' morality.  Make no mistake about it.  They're
'identical'.  And if Quality is the primary reality of the world than that
means morality is also the primary reality of the world." pg. 111

The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism.  It
claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or by
thinking about what the senses provide." pg. 113

"The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this by saying that the values of
art and morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable..." pg. 113

"The value is the reality that brings the thoughts to mind." pg. 114

"...'a thing that has no value does not exist.'  The thing has not created
the value.  The value has created the thing." pg. 114

"...if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it becomes
possible for more than one set of truths to exist.  Then one doesn't seek
the absolute 'Truth'.  One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual
explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to
the future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until
something better comes along." pg. 114

"Value is not a subspecies of substance.  Substance is a subspecies of
value." pg. 116

"Reality, which is value..." pg. 118

"In the Metaphysics of Quality 'causation' is a metaphysical term that can
be replaced by 'value'." pg. 119

"...'substance' is a derived concept, not anything that is directly
experienced.  No one has ever seen substance and no one ever will.  All
people ever see is data." pg. 120

"A particularly large amount of this time had been spent trying to lay down
a first line of division between the 'classic' and 'romantic' aspects of the
universe he'd emphasized in this first book.  In that book his purpose had
been to show how Quality could unite the two.  But the fact that Quality was
the best way of uniting the two was no guarantee that the reverse was true -
that the classic-romantic split was the best way of dividing Quality.  It
wasn't." pg. 125

"Not subject and object but static and Dynamic is the basic division of
reality.  When A.N. Whitehead wrote that 'mankind is driven forward by dim
apprehensions of things too obscure for its existing language,' he was
writing about Dynamic Quality.  Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual
cutting edge of reality, the source of all things, completely simple and
always new. pg. 133

"Static quality, the moral force of the priests, emerges in the wake of
Dynamic Quality.  It is old and complex.  It always contains a component of
memory." pg. 133

"That is why we think of subjects and objects as primary.  We can't remember
that period of our lives when they were anything else." pg. 138

"Life can't exist on Dynamic Quality alone.  It has no staying power.  To
cling to Dynamic Quality alone apart from any static patterns is to cling to
chaos." pg. 139

"Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world in
which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order,
preserve our world.  Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without
the other." pg. 139

"... It isn't Lila that has quality; it's Quality that has Lila.  Nothing
can have Quality.  To have something is to possess it, and to possess
something is to dominate it.  Nothing dominates Quality." pg. 159

"All life is a migration of static patterns of quality toward Dynamic
Quality." pg. 160

"A Dynamic advance is meaningless unless it can find some static pattern
with which to protect itself from degeneration..." pg. 169

"Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature.  They originate
out of society, which originates out of biology which originates out of
inorganic nature.  And, as anthropologists know so well, what a mind thinks
is as dominated by social patterns as social patterns are dominated by
biological patterns and as biological patterns are dominated by inorganic
patterns." pg. 179

"Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived." pg.
179

"The Metaphysics of Quality says that if moral judgments are essentially
assertions of value and if value is the fundamental ground-stuff of the
world, then moral judgments are the fundamental ground-stuff of the world.

"It says that even at the most fundamental level of the universe, static
patterns of value and moral judgment are identical.  The 'Laws of Nature'
are moral laws." pg. 180

"... not just life, but everything, is an ethical activity.  It is nothing
else." pg. 181

"...there is not just one moral system.  There are many." pg. 183

"In general, given a choice of two courses to follow and all other things
being equal, that choice which is more Dynamic, that is, at a higher level
of evolution, is more moral." pg. 183

"We're at last dealing with morals on the basis of reason." pg. 183

"A human being is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral
precedence over a society.  Ideas are patterns of value.  They are at a
higher level of evolution than social patterns of value." pg. 185

"...isolation of these static moral codes was important.  They were really
little moral empires all their own, as separate from one another as the
static levels whose conflicts they resolved:" pg. 187

"First, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of biological
life over inanimate nature.  Second, there were moral codes that established
the supremacy of the social order over biological life - conventional
morals - proscriptions against drugs, murder, adultery, theft and the like.
Third, there were moral codes that established the supremacy of the
intellectual order over the social order - democracy, trial by jury, freedom
of speech, freedom of the press.  Finally there's a fourth Dynamic morality
which isn't a code." pg. 187

"The static patterns that hold one level of organization together are often
the same patterns that another level of organization must fight to maintain
its own existence." pg. 188

"Intellect is not an extension of society any more than society is an
extension of biology." pg. 189

"He had come to think of dreams as Dynamic perceptions of reality.  They
were suppressed and filtered out of consciousness by conventional patterns
of static social and intellectual order but they revealed a primary truth: a
value truth.  The static patterns of the dreams were false but the
underlying values that produced the patterns were true." pg. 247

"The force of evolutionary creation isn't contained by substance.  Substance
is just one kind of static pattern left behind by the creative force." pg.
250

"When societies and cultures and cities are seen not as inventions of 'man'
but as higher organisms than biological man, the phenomena of war and
genocide and all the other forms of human exploitation become more
intelligible. " pg. 250

"When E.B. White wrote, 'If you want to live in New York you should be
willing to be lucky,' he meant not just 'lucky', but 'willing' to be lucky -
that is, Dynamic." pg. 252

"The real reason [freedom] is so hallowed is that when people talk about it
they mean Dynamic Quality." pg. 253

"From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism.  It's
a higher form of evolution.  It is an intellectually guided society, not
just a society that is guided by mindless traditions." pg. 253

"Science superseded old religious forms, not because what it says is more
true in any absolute sense (whatever 'that' is), but because what it says is
more Dynamic." pg. 254

"But scientific truth has always contained an overwhelming difference from
theological truth: it is provisional.  Science always contains an eraser, a
mechanism whereby new Dynamic insight could wipe out old static patterns
without destroying science itself.  Thus science, unlike orthodox theology,
has been capable of continuous, evolutionary growth.  ... The pencil is
mightier than the pen." pg. 254

"When you define morality scientifically as that which enhances evolution it
sounds as though you have really solved the problem of what morality is.
But then when you try to say specifically what is and what isn't evolution
and where evolution is going, you find you are right back in the soup again.
...[Y]ou can't really say whether a specific change is evolutionary at the
time it occurs." pg. 256

"Freedoms that save the saviors also save the degenerates..." pg. 256

"Celebrity is to social patterns as sex is to biological patterns.  ... This
celebrity is Dynamic Quality within a static social level of evolution. ...
Celebrity is the Dynamic Quality that primitive 'social' patterns once used
to organize themselves. ... Without this celebrity force, advanced complex
human societies might be impossible.  Even simple ones." pg. 293

"Biological man does not create his society any more than soil 'creates' a
tree. ... In this manner biological man is exploited and devoured by social
patterns that are essentially hostile to his biological values." pg. 303

"...intellect and society are still fighting it out, and that is the key to
understanding of both the Victorians and the twentieth century." pg. 303

"...Victorians were the last people to believe that patterns of intellect
are subordinate to patterns of society." pg. 304

"The new culture that has emerged is the first in history to believe that
patterns of society must be subordinate to patterns of intellect." pg. 304

"A society that tries to restrain the truth for its own purposes is a lower
form of evolution than a truth that restrains society for its own purposes."
pg. 306

"With Victorian spirits atrophied and their minds hemmed in by social
restraints, all avenues to any quality other than social quality were
closed." pg. 307

"The new cultural relativism became popular because it was a ferocious
instrument for the dominance of intellect over society....Society could no
longer pass judgment on intellect." pg. 316

"...the Metaphysics of Quality goes on to say that science, the intellectual
pattern that has been appointed to take over society, has a defect in it.
The defect is that subject-object science has no provision for morals.
Subject-object science is only concerned with facts.  Morals have no
objective reality." pg. 316

"What the Metaphysics of Quality makes clear is that it is only 'social'
values and morals, particularly church values and morals, that science is
unconcerned with." pg. 342

"Our scientific description of nature is always culturally derived.  Nature
tells us only what our culture predisposes us to hear.  The 'selection' of
which inorganic patterns to observe and which to ignore is made on the basis
of social patterns of value, or when it is not, on the basis of biological
patterns of value." pg. 343

"The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover an ultimate
meaning of the universe.  That is a relatively recent fad.  Its historical
purpose has been to help a society find food, detect danger, and defeat
enemies.  ... The cells Dynamically invented animals to preserve and improve
their situation.  The animals Dynamically invented societies, and societies
Dynamically invented intellectual knowledge for the same reasons." pg. 344

"... the Metaphysics of Quality answers, 'The fundamental purpose of
knowledge is to Dynamically improve and preserve society.'  Knowledge has
grown away from this historic purpose and become an end in itself just as
society has grown away from its original purpose of preserving physical
human beings and become an end in itself".  pg. 344

"The Metaphysics of Quality says there are not just two codes or morals,
there are actually five: inorganic-chaotic, biological-inorganic,
social-biological, intellectual-social, and Dynamic-static." pg. 345

"...the Hippie revolution was the moral movement.  The present period is the
collapse of values. ... The Hippie revolution of the sixties was a moral
revolution against both society and intellectuality ... no intellectual had
predicted and no intellectuals were able to explain. ... Degeneracy was
practiced for degeneracy's sake." pg. 346

"The great intellectual revolution of the first half of the twentieth
century ... was killed, hoist on its own petard of freedom from social
restraint." pg. 347

"The Hippie rejection of social and intellectual patterns left just two
directions to go: toward biological quality and toward Dynamic Quality." pg.
348

"When biological quality and Dynamic Quality are confused the result isn't
an increase in Dynamic Quality.  It's an extremely destructive form of
degeneracy..." pg. 348

"The end of the twentieth century in America seems to be an intellectual,
social, and economic rust-belt, a whole society that has given up on Dynamic
improvement and is slowly trying to slip back to Victorianism, the last
static ratchet-latch." pg. 349

"Morals can't function normally because morals have been declared
intellectually illegal by the subject-object metaphysics that dominates
present social thought.  These subject-object patterns were never designed
for the job of governing society." pg. 351

"The Metaphysics of Quality is a continuation of the mainstream of
twentieth-century American philosophy [William James].  It is a form of
pragmatism, of instrumentalism, which says the test of the true is the good.
It adds that this good is not a social code or some intellectualized
Hegelian Absolute.  It is direct everyday experience." pg. 419

"Phaedrus thought sectarian religion was a static social fallout from
Dynamic Quality and that while some sects had fallen less than others, none
of them told the whole truth." pg. 431

"'Dharma' is Quality itself, the principle of 'rightness' which gives
structure and purpose to the evolution of all life and to the evolving
understanding of the universe which life has created." pg. 439

"Phaedrus saw nothing wrong with this ritualistic religion as long as the
rituals are seen as merely a static portrayal of Dynamic Quality, a signpost
which allows socially pattern-dominated people to see Dynamic Quality.  The
danger has always been that the rituals, the static patterns, are mistaken
for what they merely represent and are allowed to destroy the Dynamic
Quality they were originally intended to preserve." pg. 441

"The south wind was stronger here and it cooled him.  It was steady, like a
trade wind.  Nothing interfered with its flow toward him over the huge
ocean. 'Vast emptiness and nothing sacred.'  If ever there was a visible
concrete metaphor for Dynamic Quality this was it." pg. 441

"Strictly speaking, the creation of any metaphysics is an immoral act since
it's a lower form of evolution, intellect, trying to devour a higher mystic
one." pg. 457