BODVAR, ROGER, STRUAN and all those who posted Jan 6, 7 and 8:
I just had three days off work and finished re-reading Lila, so I'm
fresh and ready.
BO, ROGER: Thanks for responding directly to the question posed; what
does each level value? There were no disagreements worth mentioning, but
I was thinking of more detailed answers concerning "real life"
situations. You know, like the way Pirsig describes the Zunis, the
Victorians and Lila herself as various patterns in conflict. Didn't
think you'd get off that easy did you? Try this question as an example;
"What values are in conflict in the current case of the impeachment of
the U.S. President?"
I'm tempted to try and respond to all the postings of the last three
days, but that would be cruel to you and difficult for me. Instead the
focus will be on just the top two levels of static quality. Seems the
disagreements about the social and intellectual levels have been
frequent and deep. At least one person even denied the existence of the
intellect. Yikes!
As I mentioned, I just read Lila again and was thinking about the issue
as I went through it. Even then, it wasn't easy to see the difference.
Toward the end he used a description that really clicked for me and I
think I get it now. He used two words that are key to the distinction;
mythos and logos. I guess you could say they are the "myths" and the
"logic", but that wouldn't be exactly right.
The mythos is the underlying structure of society. Each culture has its
own mythos, or IS its own mythos. The mythos exists prior to any
intellectualizations about it. It is "unconscious" in a way. It includes
the customs, rituals, gods and the social hierarchies that go with them.
The language of the culture contains all the hidden assumptions and
beliefs of the mythos. We are so imbedded in the mythos of our culture,
that its nearly impossible to escape and difficult to even see it.
Pirsig says that if you think you're outside the mythos, then you simply
don't understand what the mythos is.
The logos is the intellect. The intellect divides and analyzes the
mythos. The intellect says "hey, just what are these gods exactly?",
"Why is he the boss?" and "how can our society be ruled more justly,
more wisely, or more profitably?" The intellect is embedded in the
inescapable mythos, yet presumes to stand apart and observe the ground
of its being. It can not exist outside the mythos, but is seperate from
it. The logos, the intellect, has altered the mythos only in the same
way that the intellect can forge metal or cross-breed farm animals.
These manipulations are superficial and basically are just exploiting
their inherent properties (value patterns) for a specific purpose. The
intellect doesn't really ever change the mythos by itself. The mythos
evolves Dynamically just like everything else in the universe, and it
doesn't matter if the intellect realizes or not. The intellect can
invent democratic institutions and otherwise reform society, but the
mythos isn't persuaded by it. There was something already in our mythos
that allowed the evolution of democratic governments, the intellect just
serves to work it out in the culture.
The intellect is not so inescapable. History demonstrates that world
views change in time. The mythos remains, but intellectualizations about
can change quickly. (See Thomas Kuhn's "The structure of scientific
revolutions". Every cosomology that's come and gone was within our
mythos, but not all of them included a subject/object metaphysics.
(Cultures of the East don't suffer from the complications of our SOM
metaphysics. They've got a different mythos, a different kind of
language and culture.)
The intellectual levels of values is the most Dynamic level and
evolutionary changes occur in it all the time. In fact it seems the
levels are more static as they descend. The inorganic level is so static
it seems forever fixed. We have an idea that biological evolution takes
millions and billions of years and the social level must evolve faster
than that. Thousands of years? How many generations does it take to
change a mythos? An intellectual order can be over thrown in just a few
generations and can change instantly in an individual.
In short, the same intellectual patterns can exist many different
individual throughout a society and that makes them seem like social
level patterns. Widely held intellectual patterns (logos) are not to be
confused with social patterns (mythos).
Struan: I honestly didn't understand your reasoning and so can't respond
directly, but your bringing materialism to the MOQ debate seems like
bringing a klan member to a NAACP meeting. Materialism is Pirsig's Moby
Dick.
As to the question of Mysticism and the MOQ, I refer to page 373 of the
hard back Bantam edition, Pirsig says,
"The MOQ indentifies religious mysticism with Dynamic Quality. ... Both
lunatics and mystics have freed themselves from the conventional static
intellectual patterns of thier culture. The only difference is that the
lunatic has shifted over to a private static pattern of his own, wheras
the mystic has abandoned all static patterns in favor of pure Dynamic
Quality"
And on page 377 he says, "He thought about how once this integration
occurs and Dynamic Quality is identified with religious mysticism it
produces an avalanche of information as to what Dynamic Quality is."
Hugs and kisses,
David B.
homepage - http://www.moq.org
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