ROGER MARY HORSE GLOVE JONATHAN and the rest of the SQUAD:
I've read your posts from Monday and Tuesday and would like to jump in.
I agree with the idea (Jonathan's?) that the levels proceed in an
evolutionary climb toward greater complexity and greater freedom. This
is especially clear on the inorganic and biological levels. Its easy to
imagine the difference between a chemical reaction and cell division.
The social and intellectual levels are both very complex. Sometimes it's
hard to say which is which. I think alot of the disagreement and
confusion would disappear if everyone could magically learn all the
world's anthropology, history, psychology, political science, physics,
philosophy, theology, sociology, literature, art, and architechture.
Then you could sort it out. :-)
the laws of nature law of the jungle federal law intellectual
morality
On the other hand, these levels are really nothing special. In a way its
as simple as animal, vegetable or mineral. (Dictionary definitions of
the terms involed in the four levels would be perfectly good even for
our discussion.) These things can be described by ordinary language and
grasped by ordinary thoughts. Its all well within the subject/object
metaphysic that he sought to overcome.
I think Pirsig just wants to show that his new metaphysics works on all
levels. (It's a really a new epistomolgy that is so radical that it
creates a new cosmology and answers alot of metaphysical questions.) He
simply wants to demonstrate, using well known and widely accepted
distinctions, that his claims are universal.
Clearly, he believes the levels exist in a kind of hierarchy with the
intellectual patterns at the top. But i think in Pirsig's universe there
is nothing but patterns. The whole thing is a verb. This idea is so
predominant in Pirsig's thinking that I suspect that when he talks about
static and dynamic, the terms are relative. I like to think of it as
older, simple, stable patterns and newer, playful, complex patterns - or
something like that. Glaciers are slower than rivers, but they're both
moving in their own time. Atoms decay and galaxies turn. It's all
patterns, all Quality event driven.
We are trading in intellectual patterns at the moment, but we are also
social creatures with biological needs. And of course the inorganic
level is in us too. That's why we are "collections of patterns". We are
a symphony of patterns, created by the forces of value (Quality) from
all levels of reality.
Quality is the creator of all the patterns at all the levels and all the
levels exist simultaneously within each of us. Makes me feel at home.
:-)
This is not to say, as one SQUAD member said something like "everything
was created by Quality and so everything is moral". No, no, no. That is
another good reason for Pirsig to spell out the four levels. He does
more than suggest its possible to be immoral. He seems to imply that
transgressions of the levels is most the grave offence against nature. I
think he makes the case that intellect, in spite of all the problems it
caused him, is the highest level. Its immoral to put the values of the
lower levels in authority over the intellect. "Think with your gut" was
a notion hilter subscribed to, a spontaneous, satisfying bowel movement
in the punch bowl will ruin your social life forever, etc
(It seems some squad members are confused by the word "intellectual".
It doesn't mean a high minded or elite scholar. Any conscious mental
activity is intellectual. Even romantic, poetic, intuitive thoughts are
preformed by the intellect. We could argue about the value of my mental
activitiy, but surley the intellect is engaged when one is making a
stone tool or discussing philosophy.)
Paradoxically, Pirsig's quest was for "the ghost of rationality itself"
ZAAMM p.97 because that rationality had rendered the Western culture
hollow, empty and meaningless. He said it was "the genetic defect" of
our civilization. p.102 He puts the intellectual level at the top, yet
he wants to overhaul it. Subject/object thinking works for practical
purposes, like Newtonian science, but when it comes to answering the
really tough questions about the nature of reality it fails. He wants to
help usher in new intellectual patterns that can recognize and
accomodate the underlying Quality; new words and concepts that describe
reality in terms of the MOQ.
But that's just what I think.
Naked, ashamed and eating at the tree of knowledge,
David B.
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