Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Mon, 23 Mar 1998 04:53:24 +0100
On Sat, 21 Mar 98 12:42:19 PST
Kevin Sanchez wrote:
> Even though, with your response, the Nazi analogy may be "killed" (excuse
> the pun), it still may justify murder on the individual level and
> resurrected by the analysis I am about to give. A person has an idea
> (intellectual level) that the person whom s/he is
> pointing a gun at should die (biological to inorganic level.) Despite
> whether he enlists people to help him with social customs, an individual
> mass muderer still seems justified in killing with Pirsig's philosophy. I
> see two (or four) possibilities out of this box:
Kevin please slow down! You have us going into year 2000!.
I must repeat some elementaries to get you out of your
"box". An impulse -even a deliberate thought - that a person
harbours about another person deserving to die has nothing to do with
IDEAS in the MOQ sense. Look, we have spent six months covering a
lot of ground and the first misunderstanding that pestered us was the
equation: Intellect of MOQ=Mind of SOM. As you know, the mind/matter
schism is the first offshoot of subject/object thinking, but as
matter is relegated to the bottom value level, "mind" cannot and
- does not - retain its position. Intellect of MOQ is no realm beyond
matter; it is a realm beyond SOCIETY!. Everything or nothing is mind
in a Quality sense! I must harp on this or it will face us each time
a new member makes hir entry to the squad.
About "killing" again:
1.Taking of life is immoral at the Intellectual moral level -
regardless! This level is all about the high value of the individual.
Human rights, human ethics you called, each and every
New Testament Christian value is Intellect's.
2. The Social level values only the common cause, and an individual is
"safe" as long it follows its laws, this goes for a wolf pack as much
as a human community. If not, it is rejected. No "killing" goes on
at that level, that is an intellectual idea.
3. The Biological level cares only for LIFE and the individual
organism has no value except as a reproduction means.
4. The Inorganic level knows no life at all, but it values its
own morals none the less.
This is the basics. A human being is a hierachy of all these levels.
We have tentatively used "dimensions" because the inclusiveness and
discreteness is well demonstrated by the spatial dimensions. Height,
breadth and width are discrete, but there 's no point where one ends
and another takes over. Likewise our focus shifts incessantly in the
moral continuum. Our perch is the high intellectual, but a
threat to whatever cause you identify with and you are in the Social
dimension feeling deep emotions of pro and con; a stimuli and you are
an biological organism sensing pain or lust or whatever. The lowest
dimension's "representation"? Well, let's say we still discuss it.
To your example of the gunman. The one with the gun may hate the other
for whatever reason; and in doing so he is focussed at the Social
level where emotions rage, but no one can use an Intellectual
theory as motive for killing other people. Well, what about the
Nazi "idea" of extermination of the Jews? Of course they used
language's concepts in their deliberations, and possibly THOUGHT hard
about how to go about it, but this was intellect's tools in the
service of a lower level, namely Hitler's SOCIAL hatred of the Jews,
and his alleged love for Germany. The dictator on top incarnating the
CAUSE is the Social level's political face. An Ayatolla sentencing a
writer to death for instance.
USA is an intellectually dominated country, but still have the death
penalty in some states, how is that? Social values are of course part
of American reality as it is of any other. Craving for retaliation
emerges at the news of violent crimes and no president or congressman
can ignore such sentiments. After all, ALL countries have one or
other form of punishment for unwanted action and punishment is
inherently violation of the individal's rights. Still the
Intellect demands a "humane" way of execution while the
Social-dominated Middle East makes no fuss. Only the Quality model
of reality gives a credible explanation of these quandaries
contrasted to the subject/object analysis with its eternal fretting
over "evil-natured" alternating with the "good- natured" mankind.
Well, Kevin this wasn't strictly following your line of thought, but
the basic Quality tenets must be observed or you will bang your head
into the first "riddle" posed from a SOM point of view.
I agree with you. The MOQ could have been elaborated upon by Pirsig,
not necessarily in the novel form. Our messages here at the LS don't
reach far compared to a book from his hand. Perhaps he will change
his mind. He is human after all.
Bo
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