Lila squaders!!
I'm happy to be joining you as a new member and this is my first post.
This month's program asks, in part:
<In answering this question we will have to examine both the
subject-object
<metaphysics and the intellectual level and find out what they are...
I'm having trouble with the intellectual level as it fits
into the MOQ, and from reading squad postings it seems others might be
too.
There isn't a lot of contention about the inorganic, biological, and
social
levels. We all know what they are. But when it comes to the intellectual
level,
it gets messy. And why is that? Aren't we near and dear to our
intellects?
Maybe too near and dear?
Part of the confusion is the proposal that SOM is equivalent to
the intellectual level, but I think that's just part of it. There's a
deeper
problem and it's with the MOQ itself.
Pirsig claims:
1) it's immoral (or at least a moral dilemma) for a society to kill a
person
because that person may possess intellectual ideas that one day might
benefit society.
2) a society may morally go to war, sacrificing the lives of people
because it's
more moral for a social pattern to devour a biological pattern.
3) examples of intellectual patterns are freedom of speech, trial by
jury, and
scientific knowledge and the scientific method (which borrow almost
completely
from SOM).
The things that don't sound right are:
a) 1 and 2 are at odds. A theory isn't good if you can make arguments of
convenience like this.
b) how can an individual be more important than a society? This sounds
retro to
his idea that levels are composed of "organisms" of the previous
level:
cells are composed of atoms.
animals are composed of cells.
societies are composed of animals.
But intellect is not composed of societies; at least Pirsig never says
so.
c) Freedom of speech, trial by jury, and other human rights sound like
social
laws to me. What makes them intellectual? The intellectual patterns
should
be derivative but clearly distinct from the social patterns, but these
do not feel that way. For an example of one that does: Schrodinger's
equation
(a law of atoms) never comes up when you discuss the mechanisms of
cell
division.
I would modify the MOQ to say that:
- Uncertainty (in quantum mechanical terms) is the primary tool or
motive
force of DQ within the inorganic level.
- Mutation is the primary tool or motive force of DQ within the cellular
level.
- Sex is the primary tool or motive force of DQ within the animal level.
- Language is the primary tool or motive force of DQ within the social
level.
Intellect, a happy by-product of language, along with other tools
invented by
our intellect, may propel us to the next level, if there is one (a
global
virtual village or some far-out new organism that behaves as a
collective
consciousness, perhaps?).
The intellect does not have its own level. It's just a fantastic
tool inside the human animal that enabled society to evolve into the
Giant it
is today. It's been around at least as long as the Greeks and surely a
lot
longer than that. The fact that this intellect can look in on itself has
caused
the intellect much distress, in that this round-and-round-and-round
problem
might corrupt its window on reality. And how to best avoid that
corruption? You
guessed it. Our evil but highly productive friend, SOM!!
Regards,
Glennn
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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