Hi David & all,
>David:
>Glove and Bo have mostly been confusing me. Who is using a capitol 'Q'
>in front of words? Cut it out! Use standard English! Talk like a person,
>will ya? :-)
I'm very new myself, David. I've been a member for a year now, but that
doesn't mean I've been reading the posts! I dutifully filed them away
meaning to catch up sometime, but well, once the number of posts passed 1000
that began to look pretty hopeless. So here I am posting away oblivious to
the fact that somebody else probably already said everything I can think of
long ago, and said it much better! Oh well... And hey, Glove, please don't
jump on us newbies too hard, it sounds like maybe your social values are
devouring your intellectual level! ;-)
I can help with the Q-Intellect and Q-Social stuff. Q-Intellect represents
IntPoVs and Q-Social stands for SocPoVs (I think!).
>But I think you two were really on to something when your debate over
>the two top levels focused on social patterns in animals and
>proto-humans. It seems like there is a point when our ancestors became
>human and that must be about when the intellectual patterns began to
>emerge from social patterns. Before proto-humans became self conscious
>there was not yet an intellectual level on earth. (As far as we know.)
>Before early man became self-conscious, the social level must have been
>the highest level.
As I said once in an earlier post, this Squad has been wrangling over the
definition of the levels since day one, and will probably continue to do so
well into the forseeable future! I tend to "side" with Bodvar, but in the
end I don't really think it matters a whole lot how one classifies
particular behaviors. What matters to me is realizing that everything
(every subject and every object and every subjective thing) is included in
the levels. The levels are just a framework for hanging value sets on. I
think as long as everyone is on the right wavelength about the fact that the
levels are sets of values, then where a particular thing fits in the levels
could be argued (and argued, and argued, and argued). Lay off Glove. :-)
> Who said snails have intellect? That's laughable.
I would agree if what was meant by intellect was actually Q-Intellect. No,
snails don't have that, but as to whether they have some rudimentary form of
intelligence?
>Bees and ants have social patterns, but mostly we think of the social
>lives of wolves or chimps. They're highly evolved, intelligent mammals
>who've been finely tuned in the last few million years, just like us. We
>can relate to their societies. We must have lived in societies just like
>them in our ancient past and vestages still remain.
Bodvar pointed out a day or 2 ago that we have to be careful when thinking
about society because we are all completely steeped in the Western culture
which itself has been steeped in Q-Intellect. We have no experience of
living in a pre Q-Intellect society.
> Natural selection ignores value, is too mechanistic and explains too
little.
Yes, I think Darwinian evolution is basically correct, but also suffers from
the S/O soup we live in and needs to be enhanced. Darwinian evolution is
exemplified in the "dog eat dog world" cynicism so prevalent today. It
gave us a biological explanation, but omitted all the Quality aspects. It's
good "science" as far as it goes, but it has left us bereft of meaning.
Remember how the "robber barons" of the turn of the century exploited it?
>Having said all that about evolution, now I'd ask you to think about the
>garden of Eden
Toward the end of "Lila", Pirsig talks about tracing the emergence of
"Quality" thinking back as far as the Indo-Europeans, who indeed did seem to
have a grasp of it (if he's right about the original meaning of the word
"rt"). Well, operating under the guidance of the biblical maxim to "know
thyne enemy as thyself", I've over the years read a lot about the origins of
Christianity. There has been some research done which seems to indicate
that Christ spent some time in India before he began his teaching career.
There are scholars today who think he might have actually picked up most of
his ideas in India - which is BTW, the place where the Indo-Europeans (or
aryans as they were known to the native Indians) built their magnificent
civilization on the banks of the Ganges. If memory serves, the Indo-Euros
had their own version of the golden rule, and a belief in this concept of
"rt". Both things that are liberally sprinkled throughout the New
Testament. Maybe someone can help me out with this. I need to re-read a
few things, so don't take this as cast in stone!
>One more thought to tease - I think that subject object thinking
>dominates Western civilization because of the forces of value, but its'
>time is limited and its' task is almost complete. The intellectual level
>may soon be radically transformed. There may even be a new level about
>to emerge from the intellectual level. Anyone care to speculate?
I think the clock started ticking faster when the atomic bomb was invented,
so I hope you're right!
>... I can
>produce evidence that the author himself and at least one professional
>academic philosopher believes the MOQ is mystical. I believe that to
>think otherwise makes it nearly impossible to discuss Pirsig's work in
>any meaningful way and only demonstates a misunderstanding of myticism
>or the MOQ or both. I know that's a harsh statement, but I'm very
>worried about the quality of our debate.
Believe it or not, I agree with you. But at the same time, I will fight
tooth and nail when Dynamic Quality is equated with god, or Zen, or most
particularly with a New Age "awareness". These terms have been
misappropriated to support so many things that are not dynamic and certainly
not of high quality, that I really must shy away from them. Remember, we
already have an "Aryan Nation Cosmotheist" who said in this forum just the
other day that it was inspired by Pirsig's ideas! Thanks but no thanks. I
would hate to see Pirsig's work twisted around to suit every racist or
Christian Fundamentalist group looking for a tag line. We need to be
careful not to encourage them. To me, DQ is a very personal notion, and
very new. I like to think I have enough respect for it to not define it in
ordinary terms.
[end of sermon] ;-)
Best wishes to all on this Christmas Eve,
Mary
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