Hi Squad,
I'm re-sending this because I never saw it come through on the list. Sorry
if you get 2 copies...
Wow! I don't know where to start. Thank you all for the intriguing ideas
and humor (David). I wanted to post last night, but felt so overwhelmed by
all the ideas that I decided to sleep on it. Unfortunately, that makes for
a very long post ... you have been warned! I really like Bodvar's
disclaimer at the top of a post were says everything is IMHO. Goes for me
to...
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JONATHAN wrote on 12/28/98:
>Our modern society is dominated by intellectual control. Everything
>is designed and planned. ...
>But just a few hundred years ago all this planning was almost
>unheard of. Towns grew haphazardly ... Pirsig talks about Victorian
>society as a pre-intellectual one, but the Victorians were planners.
>They set up libraries, schools, laboratories, hospitals, factories,
>railway networks ... This is why social grace became a veneer,
>because the underlying driving force for change was now the
>intellect.
>My "one liner" for today is ***Intellect is Planning***
>Intellect (as planning) is a force for change. The levels define
>WHAT we change. Intellect is no more a level than that other force
>for change, Evolution.
You have said that there is no such thing as an intellectual level separate
from the social level, and seem to be saying here that our overall intellect
is only concerned with planning. Is this right? Don't we think of lots of
things that are not plans? Where does logic fit? I agree completely that
intellect is a force for change. In my view it has been every since we
acquired it. But I think it was initially a development of the biological
level that made more advanced society possible. It only split off into it's
own level when it advanced to the point where it no longer served society
exclusively and instead began to serve itself.
S/O logic has been with us for a very long time, probably as long as we have
been human. I think cavemen used it (see Pirsig's discussion of babies
toward the end of chapter 9 in "Lila", page 137 for those who, like me, have
the cheap paperback edition!). I think it was present from the moment we
first became self-aware; the moment we began to perceive ourselves as
something apart from our environment. In fact, I think other species engage
in a rudimentary form of S/O logic too. My horses, dogs, cats, goats, and
the squirrels I watch in the trees are examples of self-aware entities (not
to be mammal-centric, just that those are the animals I see regularly). At
the point of self-awareness we became the subject and everything else became
the object. Self-awareness is a prerequisite to emotion. But it was not a
separate level yet. That only happened when it reached a point where we
began to use it as an end in itself rather than as a way of enhancing our
societal and biological needs. When we began to say, "Hey, I don't 'care'
what society thinks, this is the way things really are." S/O logic became a
level at the moment we decided we didn't 'care'. At the moment our attitude
changed. Oh boy, that opens a can of worms doesn't it! Now it sounds like
the 4th level could be defined as a change in attitude. hmmmm.
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ROGER wrote on 12/28/98:
>The patterns have purpose.....not the levels.
>ROGER ADDS:
>The value forces for that level are the "rightness" of the level.
>And the levels don't try to preserve themselves..... the patterns
>within the level that are created may though. The social level
>doesn't try to preserve itself.... it is not a SYSTEM, it is a
>description of a set of common values and emergent patterns.....
>Societies try to preserve themselves.
ROGER replies to JONATHAN on 12/28/98:
>The levels are defined by their forces of change, not by the
>emergent patterns. I would reverse your statement and say that:
>1)Intellect(planning) is a unique force of change
>2)The levels are defined by the forces of change, not by the
>emergent patterns
>3)Intellect is a level
I think our disagreement is semantic and stems from how one reads Pirsig.
Here are some quotes from "Lila", all in chapter 8, that cause me some
confusion about purpose:
"The value is the reality that brings the thoughts to mind." (pg. 114, near
beginning of ch. 8)
"...a thing that has no value does not exist." (pg. 114, near beginning of
ch. 8)
"... if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality..." (pg. 114
again)
"Value is not a subspecies of substance. Substance is a subspecies of
value." (pg. 116)
"In the MoQ 'causation' is a metaphysical term that can be replaced by
'value'." (pg. 119)
I'm not sure how one can make a distinction between the manifestation of
value and value itself.
>ROGER also wrote:
>I actually interpret the emergence of each level as INITIALLY a way
>to resolve conflicts between patterns at that prior level.
>MARY RESPONDED:
><<While I see the emergence of each level as initially a moral
>enhancement to the current level.>>
>ROGER NOW ADDS:
>Interesting. Could you tell me more?
We are probably saying the same thing here?
>In brief, I believe my only fundamental concern is with how you seem
>to be "anthropomorphicising" the levels.
ROGER added on 12/29/98:
>In reading after I posted, I find many examples where RMP writes
>that the levels are systems of values. So sorry. However, I still
>stand behind the warning that we should not anthropomorphisize the
>levels. RMP does this several times too..... but I believe this is
>"artistic license", (this is a novel) and that he would not
>attribute volition to a level.
Oh Roger! You really know how to hit me where it hurts! ;-) Sometime back
in a response to Bodvar, I tried to explain 'Universal Quality' as opposed
to 'Human Quality'. The point was that Daddy (Clark) and myself were
concerned that the MOQ was being anthropomorphised - made human-centric and
that we should try to remember that the Quality idea applies to the universe
in it's entirety. Now I seem to be guilty of the same thing! But, you
know, Pirsig is guilty too. All of his explanations of the social and
intellectual level are based on human analogs; and when we are discussing
the STATIC social and intellectual levels I think that's OK. OK because who
else do we have to talk about right now? When other beings capable of
high-order static social and intellectual levels are discovered we may well
want to revise the static system. Pirsig makes provision for that too when
he says, "...if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then
it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one
doesn't seek the absolute 'Truth'. One seeks instead the highest quality
intellectual explanation of things..." ("Lila", Ch. 8, pg. 114)
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HUGO wrote on 12/28/98:
>First, I think demanding every subscriber to contribute at least
>once every week, month, or whatever, is a bad idea. I have been on
>one such list, and it did not work out - the list died in a few
>months. Generally, the idea that only contributors are active on a
>mail-list is false. Every subscriber who reads the mails and thinks
>about them and maybe uses them in other contexts is an active member
>of the list. Those who do not read the mails usually leave on their
>own account.
>...
>Setting up a program may make people focus more on the
>subject, and their view of the subject, promoting monologues instead
>of dialogue. Subjects that are important arise through dialogue, and
>subjects that are not, in the present context, important will not be
>sustained in dialogue.
Hugo, I agree with you. I would not like to see lurkers barred from the
list. I was a lurker myself for a looooong time. The subjects discussed
are not superficial. I think only the most self-confident can join the list
and start posting right away. The rest of us need plenty of time to jell
our ideas before exposing them to the heady atmosphere of the Squad.
The Program, on the other hand, is probably a good idea for the closed list.
I start to get really overwhelmed when there are too many different subjects
floating around. I can't focus on any of them very well... then again, this
may be a personal problem. :-o
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David said on 12/29/98:
>I think you have transformed and exaggerated Pirsig's cautionary >remarks
to the point where you completely reject religions. You say >"because it's
so easy to take them literally rather than as an allegory >for Dynamic
Quality". And I'll agree that is a real danger. Religious
>fundamentalism is the most obvious and extreme example of literalism.
>But if I understand your objection correctly, we don't disagree very
>much at all. You're not really "opposed to using allegories" You are
>opposed to ABUSING allegories. And so am I.
>This kind of language is unavoidable in the discussion of anything
>outside of Subject/Object metaphysics. Said another way, we need the
>kind of transparent language that mysticism employs if we are to >grapple
with the Metaphysics of Quality.
Right you are, David! We really DON'T disagree at all. I've just been
letting my personal slant on religious use of allegories color my thoughts.
Unfortunately, I happen to have spent my life living in an area of the world
where allegory = literal truth is the predominant social value. The
American south, AKA the "bible belt", is not the place to go slinging
allegories around wantonly. The culture here is so steeped in allegory as
religious fact that my antenna always goes up when I hear them. In my mind
I imagine trying to explain the MOQ to this group, and always see that they
are going to equate Dynamic Quality with a god on the throne in a physical
heaven, thus perverting and destroying the whole concept. But, then again,
they wouldn't even buy the STATIC part - after all that requires belief in
evolution! ;-)
>Thanks again for the challenging fun,
No, THANK YOU! This is the most fun I've ever had while sitting in front of
a computer!
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Best Wishes,
Mary
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