GLENN REMAINS UNCONVINCED THE INTELLECT DESERVES ITS OWN LEVEL.
Pirsig states in Lila, near the beginning of chapter 8, "the tests of
truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of
explanation. The Metaphysics of Quality satisfies these". He's really
trying to describe the attributes of a good theory. He forgot one: a
good theory should make accurate predictions. Einstein's Theory of
General Relativity earned instant respect and made Einstein an instant
celebrity when it accurately predicted the perturbations in Mercury's
orbit and the degree to which star light was bent by the sun as observed
during a total eclipse, the latter a measurement no one had even
*thought* to do before.
One great prediction that MOQ should make is the next evolutionary
level, but Pirsig doesn't really take a serious stab at it. He may well
have if he hadn't chosen the highest level as the Intellectual level,
because, as I outlined in my first post last month, there is a beautiful
containment relationship running through the lower levels, which Pirsig
himself points out:
cells are composed of atoms.
animals are composed of cells.
societies are composed of animals.
But he (conveniently) doesn't point out the contradiction:
intellects are composed of societies??
But this isn't the only reason why the intellectual level sticks out
like a sore thumb. There seems to be general agreement in this forum
that the intellect grew up alongside society, that intellect sprang from
the birth of language, and that language is the crucial tool or motive
force for DQ within society. Last month Denis said the intellect was a
"chore-boy" for the social level for a long, long, time, and I agree.
Pirsig argues that intellect finally broke free from society's shackles
and became a level in its own right (although the exact day this
happened is up for debate:) ) However, none of the other levels had this
chore-boy relationship.
Another important relationship is this idea that a lower level is
oblivious to any level above it (as Bodvar reminds us). This holds true
among the lower levels but not between society and the intellect.
Society is completely aware of the intellect (this is different from
saying social thinkers completely understand intellectuals.) The
politicians, the keepers of society's power, no damn well the
intellectual scientists want to build a cyclotron the size of Texas to
better understand pure science, but society still holds the purse
strings and arguments had better be made that this cyclotron contraption
will benefit our culture, like give us a new weapons technology or a new
power generation technology, or else you can kiss your cyclotron
goodbye.
Biology was never the chore-boy of inorganic matter. Inorganic matter
didn't need a chore-boy. It had gone along just fine on its own for
billions of years, well before biology hit the scene. And when Biology
did hit the scene, inorganic matter was oblivious to it. Immediately.
Similarly, Society was never the chore-boy of Biology. Biology didn't
need a chore-boy. It had gone along just fine on its own for millions of
years, well before Society hit the scene. And when Society did hit the
scene, Biology was oblivious to it. Immediately.
Now what about philosophers and artists? Except for the most celebrated
few from these ranks that society can hold up as "poster children" of
"high culture", the rest are "starving" or marginalized in university
jobs. The plain facts say something otherwise....
The intellect is still society's chore-boy. Society is still King Giant.
While social thinkers and intellectuals are clearly different beasts, I
don't think the difference is great enough to merit a new level,
compared to the vast organizational gulfs that exist between the other
three. (In my opinion, in some ways, the Intellectual level is a step
backward, but I'm not going to get into that here.)
So if we consider an MOQ, call it MOQ3, that just contains the first 3
levels, we can more clearly guess what the next level should be. Taking
the containment relationship one step further we see that it will be a
composed of societies (cultures) that behaves as one organism, and there
will be some prime motive force of Dynamic Quality propelling it, in the
same way that language carries the DQ for the social level. What might
the prime motive force of the next level be? The Internet? Ha! And would
this new organism be useful? You bet, since it would most certainly have
some aspect about it that increases the organism's chances of survival,
even at the loss of some of the underlying societies.
Regards,
Glennn
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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