From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Sun Mar 23 2003 - 21:58:20 GMT
Dear David B.,
You wrote 9 Mar 2003 12:01:47 -0700:
'It seems you're all tangled up by things that are perfectly clear and I'm
running out of ways to explain it. At the risk of insulting your
intelligence, let me try to untie the knots step by step. ... I hope that
helps loosen the grip of whatever it is that has you so confused.'
I'm sorry David, but I'm not confused at all. Neither are you, I suppose.
Pirsig's writings allow different interpretations and we've simply derived
different MoQ's. I admit that I disagree with Pirsig on some points, e.g. on
the idea that patterns of value of different levels can 'fight', 'beat',
'dominate' or 'control' each other, but not enough that I can't legitimately
call my ideas 'MoQ' anymore.
Whenever Pirsig writes (or you write) that a higher level pattern fights,
beats, dominates, controls etc. a lower level pattern, I translate this into
a higher quality pattern of a specific level fighting, beating, dominating,
controlling etc. a lower quality pattern of that same level. I often agree
with Pirsig and you after that translation.
It may be that the Pirsig of 'Lila's Child' even agrees with me (while the
Pirsig of 'Lila' obviously didn't), as he wrote (in footnote 45 of the
version I have, somewhat later in the final version):
'I think the conflicts mentioned here [examples in Lila of the social level
being aware of the intellectual level] are intellectual conflicts in which
one side clings to an intellectual justification of existing social patterns
and the other side intellectually opposes the existing social patterns.'
You wrote 9 Mar 2003 12:01:47 -0700:
'Rituals are ... social level things and existed for thousands of years
before there was ever such a thing as intellect. ... To say that intellect
comes first, before ritual, is like saying that you were born before your
parents, which is logically impossible.'
I agree that rituals are elements of social patterns of values and were so
before the intellectual level appeared. ('Intellect' can be misunderstood as
a property of biological patterns of value, e.g. of the species homo
sapiens.) I didn't write that intellect (meaning the intellectual level of
intellectual patterns of value) comes before ALL rituals. I only meant that
(IF 'these [religious] rituals [ARE -Pirsig only wrote 'may be'-] the
connecting link between the social and intellectual levels of evolution')
SOME rituals (while still being elements of social patterns of values) are
ALSO elements of the first intellectual patterns of value.
You know this riddle of two fathers and two sons who go fishing, each
catch one fish and nevertheless catch only three fishes...? Seems logically
impossible too, but once you understand they are a grandson alias son, a son
alias father and a grandfather alias father, it's not.
In my interpretation of Pirsig some (religious) rituals are elements of BOTH
social patterns of value (when understood as repetitive, copied behavior)
AND intellectual patterns of value (when understood as symbols that stand
for patterns of experience).
You also objected 9 Mar 2003 12:01:47 -0700 against my statement that
"ritual can also sometimes be seen as Dynamic (not decadent/degenerate)
product of intellect", because you see a 'problem of saying ritual can be
Dynamic'.
According to you 'This violates the distinction between static and Dynamic.
Ritual is static. It is created Dynamically, is left in the wake of Dynamic
Quality, and can allow people to see DQ, but the ritual itself is static, by
definition. Your personal religious views might lead you to disagree, but
these are Pirsig's definitions and if we can't agree to accept these, at
least for the sake of argument, then we are quite simply talking about
different things.'
I didn't mean that 'ritual can be Dynamic' in the sense you interpreted my
statement. If we mean with 'ritual' a static pattern of value of which it is
an element, it is to be distinguished of Dynamic Quality. It is -indeed-
'created Dynamically' as you say. That's also what I meant.
Static patterns of value are not only 'left in the wake of Dynamic Quality'
however, but also build in an evolutionary way on previously existing static
patterns of value. In that sense 'ritual' (understood as a reference to a
static pattern of value) is a combined product of Dynamic Quality and other
static patterns of value. Dynamic Quality acts on static patterns of value
to make them migrate towards Dynamic Quality. (We can only use 'Dynamic
Quality' in this sentence as both cause and goal, because it is undefinable.
We can also call it a 'lure'.)
My religious views are not involved.
You then asked:
'If the first intellectual principles ARE DERIVED FROM THESE RITUALS, how
can
intellect come first?'
Well, apparently 'intellect' (meaning here 'the intellectual level') for me
consists of more than intellectual principles. The intellectual level
started with a dim sense of 'meaning' beyond social static quality. This dim
sense of meaning made some of the already existing rituals into 'symbols
created in the brain that stand for experience'. The first intellectual
pattern of value was a pattern of meaningful symbols, possibly religious
symbols, from which the first intellectual principles were derived. The
first intellectual principles (in my interpretation) thus didn't come first,
while 'intellect' did.
You see 'Pirsig's definition of intellectual patterns of value (= mind =
consciousness = symbols created in the brain that stand for experience) from
"Lila's Child"' as 'only one of many comments Pirsig makes about intellect'.
I take it to be a comment that is (both explicitly and because of
chronology) meant to explain (and possibly revise some of) the earlier
comments in 'Lila'. Don't you agree that this is a valid interpretation of
his definition and its context?
You think my example (hunting rituals symbolizing a successful hunt being
elements of a primitive intellectual pattern of value) is bizarre, because
'They are archaic and magical.' and 'To those who conducted such rituals,
there was nothing symbolic about it. It was real and actual and literal.'
Pirsig's definition doesn't require that those 'symbols created in the
brain' are consciously known and used as ONLY REPRESENTING experience. If
someone experiences the world of meanings created by these symbols as 'real'
in which you can 'actually' and 'literally' participate (because he/she can
not 'think about thinking' yet, or simply doesn't 'think about thinking' at
that moment), that doesn't invalidate the statement that this world of
meanings consists of intellectual patterns of value.
For me 'Iraq' is very real. I know I can actually go there. It is quite
literally a part of my world. Yet I know it almost exclusively from maps, on
which it is symbolized by lines and dots and a key to those symbols.
Most of the time all of us nowadays are not 'thinking about thinking' (even
if we are able to) and we are acting as if all this world of symbols around
us is real and actual and literal. That makes this world of symbols no less
'intellectual' though.
I agree with your post of 9 Mar 2003 12:51:37 -0700, except ... that all you
describe happens within what I call the intellectual level. Yes, also the
'mythos - logos' transition described in the Pirsig quote you give. Pirsig
may have thought when writing this part of 'Lila' that the 'mythos - logos'
transition marked a transition from the social to the intellectual level,
but his definition of the intellectual level from 'Lila's Child' gives me
the impression that he might very well agree now that it is only a
transition within the intellectual level from 'thinking about behavior' to
'thinking about thinking'. Mythology after all is all about symbols (even if
the myth-makers experienced the world described in myths as real).
Even in 'Lila' Pirsig's statement that 'this ritual-cosmos relationship went
[back] maybe fifty or one hundred thousand years' and that the rituals of
cavemen 'may be the connecting link between the social and intellectual
levels of evolution' indicates that Pirsig probably had second thoughts
about the dating of the transition from the social to the intellectual
level.
I agree with points 1) an 2) from your post of 22 Mar 2003 17:39:18 -0700
('The inability to distinguish between social and intellectual values is a
feature of SOM.' and 'The difference is huge, like the difference between
rocks and ravens.').
I disagree with point 3 and with Pirsig in the quote you give. The
distinction between social and intellectual values (stability and
versatility of social respectively intellectual patterns of value) only
explains conflicts of history and of our own time to the extent that they
originate in and are sustained by non-recognition (consciously) of the
(status/celebrity centered) forces that shape and maintain social patterns
of value. To the extent that these conflicts can be understood as driven by
(conscious) disagreements about priorities, interests, opinions, ideas etc.
they are intra-intellectual level conflicts.
'Intellect' (intellectual patterns of value) and 'society' (social patterns
of value) never 'fight'. 'I think [using Pirsig's above quoted words that]
the conflicts [you interpret and Pirsig interpreted in 'Lila' as conflicts
between 'intellect' and 'society'] are intellectual conflicts in which one
side clings to an intellectual justification of existing social patterns and
the other side intellectually opposes the existing social patterns.'
With friendly greetings,
Wim
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Mar 23 2003 - 21:57:17 GMT