Hi everyone. I'm going to try to respond to Glove in this post.
>Mary:
>Marriage is a social value, but when consummated does it then become a
>biological pattern of value? No, I think it is still a social value. The
>attraction causing the marriage may well have sprung from the biological
>level, and yet the marriage remains a social value.
>Glove:
>i would consider biological values as consuming food, eliminating waste,
>movement and reproduction. therefore consummation of marriage is indeed a
>biological value.
And I agree with you. But I made this statement in response to your initial
inquiry, which was:
>Glove 12/21/98:
>but when that conception is shared
>and agreed on by others, it becomes a social pattern of value. the only way
>it could remain an intellect pattern of value would be by not sharing it
>with others perhaps?
The reason I brought it up was to illustrate that the value of marriage is
to bioPoVs as the value of S/O logic (i.e. the intellectual level) is to
SocPoVs. Marriage does support a biological value, but it is not a
biological value in and of itself. In the same way, S/O logic can be
appropriated and used to support society, but that does not make it a SocPoV
itself. I apologize if I was cryptic before.
>Glove:
>>kind of a
>>chicken-or-egg-first type question that cannot be answered using our
linear
>>notion of Time.
>Mary:
>I think the chicken or egg problem disappears when the intellectual level
is
>defined as subject/object logic - i.e.., as a certain type of thinking -
not
>all thinking.
>Glove:
>i disagree. please define subject object logic and tell me why it is
>different from other types of thinking, and indeed what the other types of
>thinking are.
To answer these questions I need to understand where you are coming from.
To clarify your points in my mind I have taken the liberty distilling them
into what I think them to be (please, please make corrections, Glove!)
1) Pirsig defined the intellectual level as an abstraction of socPoVs.
2) The intellectual level is responsible for recognizing quality events when
it sees them.
3) This ability to recognize quality events is called awareness.
4) Thus the intellectual level IS awareness of quality events.
Ok. Since you are not sitting here, I can't verify that I have understood
this correctly, so for purposes of this post I'm going to assume that I do!
I disagree with the view that Pirsig defined the intellectual level as an
abstraction of socPoVs. I just don't see that when I read "Lila". In my
post yesterday I laid out my view that the intellectual level is the
subject/object "way of thinking", in line with SOLAQI, and I said (or tried
to say) that the reason why is because the levels split along lines of
value.
Each level can be discretely defined as a set of values. The values are
discrete rather than continuous because in the effort to move toward greater
Dynamic Quality, AND the effort to achieve stability, the strategies of one
set of values may contradict another. Thus, when one set of values is
potentially harmful to another set, you must split them into two different
levels. If you don't do that then you are looking at a mish-mash of
conflicting patterns of value and the whole thing makes no sense. You are
back where you started, with no understanding of why things happen in the
universe. The static levels are a tool for bringing clarity to the whole
situation. The static levels combined with Dynamic Quality give us, for the
first time, a way to approach the answer to the question why, without having
to invoke spirituality. When someone asks questions such as, "Why did this
terrible illness befall me? Why am I being punished?", the four static
values give us an answer, AND they answer in such a way that sometimes we
realize we need to reformulate the question!
I think it's too restrictive to say that the intellectual level is
responsible for recognizing quality events. All static levels latch onto
quality events that are supportive of that level. There's no intellect at
all involved in the inorganic level, yet Pirsig made a good case for
explaining how the inorganic level latched on to quality events and latched
them for purposes of its own enhancement and stability. If intellect is
defined as awareness of quality events, then by implication intellect must
exist at every level. But if you go down that road you are veering
dangerously close to defining the universe again in subject/object terms.
Suddenly it becomes necessary to define a consciousness which is acting at
all levels. And the reason this is bad is because then the consciousness
becomes the subject and the static levels become the object and you find
yourself right back in the middle of Subject/Object Metaphysics!
You stated that the ability to recognize quality events is called awareness.
You could call this recognition awareness when talking about humanity, but I
think that's too restrictive too. Quality events can and do occur at all
levels, and I don't think awareness is necessary in order to statically
latch them. I think what "guides" the development of the universe is trial
and error. It seems that all the static latching that occurs at every level
happens because things that are POSSIBLE at that level are tried sooner or
later, and if found to sustain the values of that level are latched. One
way to look at it is to say that the more static latches which have occurred
in a level of values, the fewer possibilities remain for that level to try.
As complexity increases within the set of latches for a level, the array of
things that are possible for that level to do is reduced. Once you start
driving down one road, it takes a great deal more energy to turn around, go
back, and start up another road. The path of least resistance takes you
down the road you are already on. I'm not saying that things become
IMpossible, just a lot harder. By inserting awareness into the situation,
you are allowing that all possibilities are still equally probable. That a
level can change direction completely because it is aware that the path it
has chosen is not working out. But, I don't think that's the way things
really happen. It's impossible to ignore the latches that have come before.
They have introduced a state of stability into the system, and like the
carbon chains, that stability is hard to break. Stability = a lessening of
probable possibility.
Now you may ask how we continue to advance? It seems like once a level has
been around for a while and done a lot of latching it becomes harder and
harder to change. Well, I think that's true for a given level; but the
trick to it is that, so far at least, each level has eventually reached a
point where it actually made new patterns of value possible. Each level may
have reduced the number of possibilities for itself, but historically (or
prehistorically) speaking, each level has latched enough that it's released
a whole NEW set of values into the universe. As a new set of values
emerges, it takes off on its own and starts latching onto whatever IT
values. And so the chain is lengthened.
We've been pretty lucky so far that no new level has latched onto something
it values that completely destroys a lower level. I think this is possible,
since any new level, by definition, is not concerned with preserving the
values of the old. In later chapters of "Lila" (about chapter 20 on),
Pirsig seems to think that the intellectual level has already destroyed the
social, and that this has been the reason for the big increase in crime and
such in the 20th century. This is a big problem, though I'm not as
pessimistic. We live in dangerous times, and not just dangerous for the
social level, but dangerous for the intellectual as well, because if a
higher level destroys a lower then the higher will go with it, and static
latching will revert back to the last latch point left before the fall. I
don't think this will happen, though, because the intellectual level can,
and has already, achieved some latches that enhance the social level as a
byproduct. The MOQ, for example, could be seen as the 5th level - capable
of saving us from ourselves.
I just realized how long this has gotten. I'm sorry! I'm on vacation now
and my son is at Montessori today so I'm working out a lot of ideas...
Best wishes,
Mary
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