From: Marco (marble@inwind.it)
Date: Sat Nov 16 2002 - 01:01:51 GMT
Hi Sam, Jonathan, Rick, Dan, Wim, all ....
as quick as I can....
SAM:
> I'd like to 1) give a few comments on your post, 2) describe my present
> understanding of 'individual', and 3) make some concluding remarks about
my
> 'campaign'.
M:
well, let's go....
=======================================
SAM:
> 1.1 Pirsig is explicit in rejecting anything non-human as an example of
> 'social level' activity. In Lila's Child :"In the MOQ all organisms are
> objective. They exist in the material world. All societies are subjective.
> They exist in the mental world. Again, the distinction is very sharp. For
> example, the "President of the U.S." is a social pattern. No objective
> scientific instrument can distinguish a President of the U.S. from anyone
> else.... ..........
M:
May I dare say I don't agree with Pirsig? (as already expressed few months
ago in my "Detecting the social" post 10 April 2002...). As Jonathan
points out, it is also impossible to "scientifically detect" the alpha male
ape. So, apes are social. For what I know, it is also impossible to
"scientifically detect" the queen of the bees, so bees are social. Rick's
point: "He was saying it takes a social pattern to recognize a social
pattern" reinforces this objection. I, social, recognize a social (of apes)
pattern.
But on the other hand, I don't agree with Rick. A computer in my opinion is
a scientific instrument. It would be strange to tell these scientists they
should not use computers to observe and detect supernovas, cancers, atoms
and so on. Indeed I interpret what the computer detects.... but as well I
interpret also what a ruler detects, as Jonathan rightly says.
Anyway, a computer can detect the winner of a chess game, and I don't need
to know the rules of chess or observe and interpret what the computer
actually detects (the match) to understand who is the winner, if only the
computers offers a simple output "white is the winner". So, playing chess is
...biological? Or, another example (from the said April post) the police
radar detects if I'm driving too fast.... overriding the road rules is it
inorganic? In my post I think there was already an answer to Rick:
M (April 2002):
f) One could say that actually the computer detects just electrons. Indeed.
But it would be like to say that the police radar can't detect I'm driving
too fast as it is actually detecting an inorganic pattern - radio waves. I
guess that this argument would not avoid me the just fine, objectively based
upon a scientifically detected traffic offence. Or it would be like to say
that I can't detect what you are meaning as my senses just detect sound.....
The fact is that we, as well as any instrument, detect/sense only inorganic
patterns that are supporting biological, social and even intellectual
information. If we want to stick to the point that actually the computer
detects only inorganic patterns -electrons-, well the consequence is that
even biological patterns can't be detected. And that we fall in the well
known dualism: matter (what is detected) / mind (our interpretation).
M:
My conclusion is that using the "scientific detection" to define the social
level does not stand. I suggested another definition for social level to 3WD
(and Wim agreed) in my "Definition of Q-Intellect" post (28 August 2002).
In short: social level is culture, that is "what we learn from the others"
in opposition to what we already have embodied in our DNA (biological
level). In this sense, culture is not exclusively human, and I don't care
too much about what science will invent to detect social or intellectual
patterns.
As Wim asks for suggestions about the machine codes, here are mine:
Carbon Atom / DNA
Communication / Culture
Rituality / Individuality
==========================
SAM:
> 1.2 Society and the fourth level both fall under the 'subjective' heading
of
> SOM thinking, and Pirsig defines 'culture' as a combination of third and
> fourth level values.
M:
But culture is not exclusively human. Please, read another message of mine:
to Wim, 19 April 2002, in the "Mysticism and manners" thread.
===========================
SAM:
> 1.3 I strongly agree with you that development of individuality depends
upon
> a supportive social environment, and that such a society is positive sum.
> 1.4 Your comment about your motorcycle was richly suggestive. Do you feel
> that if all of these 'external' attachments were removed (all your
> possessions were stolen), and then all your 'internal' attachments were
also
> removed (eg sense of self-esteem/dignity) there would be anything left?
M:
Not only my possessions, add also my family and friends... let's say, "my
connections". I'd not distinguish between external and internal, as I guess
my sense of self esteem and dignity can't be separated from the actual
existence of a positive connection with the rest of universe. Anyway, remove
all that and what's left? Frustration and sadness, I guess.
==============================================
SAM:
>
> 1.5 I also agree that the individual is a 'threshold' (the
"machine-language
> interface") between the third and fourth levels.
M:
Good!
SAM:
> 1.6 Re the physicists, in traditional Christian teaching, love is the
> highest form of knowledge. If you do not love, you cannot (fully) know.
M:
I love that! :-)
SAM:
> 1.7 If you put ethics in with art and science then you get the Platonic
> triad of 'the good, the true and the beautiful'.
M:
Yes. But I'd say that in the MOQ ethics is more than art and science. If all
universe is a moral order, then ethics predates art and science.. and
probably will last also when eventually art and science will be outdated.
===============
SAM:
> 1.8 You say: "The great artist, while following his own passions, is able
to
> communicate "something" to the others. And actually he becomes "great"
only
> when the others get "something"." That, in a different idiom, is a
beautiful
> expression of what I am trying to articulate in my talk about
'tradition' -
> the tradition is the repository of the great communications of the past,
and
> is (to a large but not exclusive degree) determinative of what counts as a
> 'great communication' now.
M:
This "tradition", isn't it more or less our "mythos"?
====================
SAM:
> 1.9 My proposed new term for the fourth level was 'eudaimonic', but I
agree
> that it is more important to first agree on what the fourth level consists
> in, and then to consider what the appropriate name for it would be.
M:
I think we should use a more common term. This is what Pirsig did. In SODAV
Pirsig says that artists and scientists are working on the conceptually
unknown... so maybe another good name could be the "conceptual level"....
===========================
About the rest of your interesting post, let me just clarify few points:
1) I also love the Greeks, but I think we often exaggerate their role about
the fourth level. They have originated the western world, so we rightly
admire them. But there's the risk to fall in a west-centered vision.
2) I don't know why you find the MOQ is "morally repugnant" about the 9/11
attack. As said, I could not read all the posts. My MOQ interpretation says
that it is a clash between a society-focused world and an individualist
world. (NOTE: IndividualIST!!!). Anyway, I think that even if it has been
terrible, the Holocaust was indeed much much worst. And Pirsig clearly
depicts Nazism as a social-focused world.
3) You say that Pirsig does not say what is the machine code for the
intellectual level. True. But Pirsig in Lila clearly states that rituals are
the "connecting link" between the third and fourth level. Then, I think
Pirsig has perfectly explained how the "self" originates in "Cruising
Blues":
" .... As one lives on the surface of the empty
ocean day after day after day and sees it sometimes huge and dangerous,
sometimes relaxed and dull, but always, in each day and week, endless in
every direction, a certain understanding of one's self begins slowly to
break through, reflected from the sea, or perhaps derived from it " .
Day after day.... rituals!!!! The ocean is one example but indeed when you
face some individual duty everyday the self breaks through. What's great is
that "the great understanding" is that you are nothing, before universe!
" This is the understanding that whether you are bored or excited, depressed
or elated, successful or unsuccessful, even whether you are alive or dead,
all this is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever. The sea keeps telling
you this with every sweep of every wave. And when you accept this
understanding of yourself and agree with it and continue on anyway, then a
real fullness of virtue and self-understanding arrives. And sometimes the
moment of arrival is accompanied by hilarious laughter. The old reality of
the sea has put cruising depression in its proper perspective at last."
Enough said....
Ciao,
Marco
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