Of all the levels, the one that seems to create the most confusion or appear
most obscure is
the intellectual level. What exactly is it? What are its values? What are
its goals? How does
it manifest itself? Why should intellectual level values prevail over social
level values? Are
intelligence and intellectual value the same thing.
In short, define the intellectual level.
----Hi
It was many years ago but I remember the incident as clearly as if it happened yesterday. In my youth I had a fondness for driving around in my old Ford pickup truck with no particular destination in mind, and on occasion would meet up with friends who might be moving some large object or another and they would ask my help, which I always provided.
One time I saw an old boy I used to know called Sea Biscuit (don't ask why for that is a story in itself) walking along the road, so I stopped and picked him up. He needed to get a canoe back to its rightful owner after borrowing it (unbeknownst to said owner) the night before. Being on a drunken binge with several friends as Biscuit happened to be, they ended up floating down the river some 20 miles or so before dragging it out in another friend's yard who lived hard by the river. Now Biscuit was fretting what the law might have to say to him if he didn't get that canoe back, pronto.
So we drove on down and placed that canoe in the back of my pickup. But the end stuck way out as it was a good 16 feet long. We certainly don't want the law to be pulling us over before we get the canoe back safely. I looked down at the ground at my feet and there lay a red piece of cloth just the right size to tie onto the end of the canoe sticking out the back of the truck. So I picked it up and tied it on.
Later Biscuit couldn't get over how I just reached down and picked up that red piece of cloth right when we needed it. I didn't really think on it all that much for that kind of thing always happened to me anyway. But Biscuit went on and on about it.
Cut forward thirty years or so. Last week I am fishing with my sons. We drive out to our favorite spot in an old pickup truck and on arriving, remember there are two new tires in the back of the truck and so decide to lock them up front in the cab, just in case. Well, that was fine but my oldest son forgot to take the keys out of the ignition before locking the doors.
We are twenty miles from nowhere and there is not a piece of wire to be found in the back of the truck. I "know" there must be wire around someplace close, though. I look down the path to our fishing spot and lying in front of it, to keep vehicles from driving down it, are a number of railroad ties wired together. It takes a little doing but I manage to weasel a wire loose and in no time I have the truck opened up.
I cannot define how it happens but both these examples are intellect at work, in my estimation. Intellect's values and goals are what we need at any particular moment to be free of any particular static problem, or gumption trap. Intellect manifests as observation and experience goaling towards freedom. Social patterns of value, on the other hand, goal towards constraints and any freedom comes with a price to be paid.
The Dynamic/static relationship expounded on by Robert Pirsig recognizes freedom as the highest good. And while there are many paths to freedom, intellect brings into view the best path. For instance, when the keys were locked in the truck, my oldest son suggested prying open the door but I told him the door would be broken then. He laughed and said he had bungy straps to hold it shut. That path was open to us but it entailed the destruction of key mechanisms holding the door together. We might liken that scenario to the old USSR jailing intellectuals who dared to speak out against the State. By locking away the brightest and most revolutionary thinkers, the USSR destroyed key mechanisms in its society which held it together.
The intellect points to the best path. Intelligence and intellect are the same and yet the former simply points human. There is something more than intelligence in reality and it is in no way confined to human beings. What that something is I cannot really say. It's that undefined moment of illumination when the past and future become now and the best way simply appears before us, daring us not to take it. The birds building their nests and the spiders spinning their webs simply know the best way to go about their business. Who can say how? That is intellect at work. Intelligence, on the other hand, has an assumption of a human quality which we sometimes attempt to attribute to non-human entities. In essence, intellect and intelligence are the same.
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