Hettinger (hettingr@iglou.com)
Wed, 4 Mar 1998 20:16:09 +0100
Hi everyone!
Magnus Berg wrote:
> Hi Maggie
>
> No kicking back from me. Let me first say that I admire what
> you're doing. I haven't really found my way of practicing MoQ in
> everyday life, although "Machine beauty" was an inspiration. Thanks
> Jason and Platt.
>
> What I will do, is to offer a little different perspective on how
> to interpret people and their interactions with other people in
> terms of SPoV. I've talked about it before and much is also in my
> Classicist essay but I'll try to apply it on your circumstances.
>
> I see that you are talking about the static ladder as one-
> dimensional, and of course it is, I'm not stating otherwise.
It puzzles me that you said that. I think I see the static "ladder" as
more of a tree, perhaps a banyan tree that has the capability of
dropping new roots from its branches.
> What I do think, is that humans fit into that ladder in more
> than one way. The most common way is to view each human as
> biological SPoV in a social SPoV and that this society supports
> intellectual SPoV.
>
> Another view is that each human is a society of biological SPoV
> and that it is this human society that supports individual
> intellectual SPoV. We had some discussions about this in the
> early history of the squad and a "IMNASHO" applies to this second
> view. (In My Not Always So Humble Opinion :)
>
> The first view results in something like Gaia, you would see
> the earth as some kind of global intellect with which an
> alien species could communicate. The other enables all of us
> to have intellect independent of other humans and would account
> for the independence of the movers and shakers you mentioned.
>
> Note that these two views are not mutually exclusive,
Right. Iit seems to be a matter of which level is operative at the
time,And which one CAN be operative. Certain types of patterns can only
be perceived from within entities that have sensory input to them.
(Lab rats and Gloria. "The medium is the message.")
> it is
> sometimes quite helpful to change perspective to get an
> explanation of some mysterious observation. In your case
> this would mean that when the educational system is kicked
> back into the biological/social struggle, this might not be
> as bad as it seems. I might have misunderstood your description
> but I guess that the intention of setting the students free
> from social rituals was to let them climb up the static ladder
> and indulge in intellectual adventures. But the result seems to
> be a plunge into the biological swamp, but this is only the
> case if the first view is applied. If the other view is applied
> however, there's very little difference between a climb to
> intellectual movers and shakers activities and biological
> decadence. Both are equally hostile to the social structure
> from which they came.
>
In my experience, in the common world (non-MoQ, that doesn't have a
distinction between S/B and S/Int), there IS "very little difference
between a climb to intellectual movers and shakers and biological
decadence. Both are equally hostile to the social structure from which
they came." By a weird quirk, which I hadn't seen 'til now, the flip
side of that coin is also just as "true". Both are equally *attractive*
to the social structure from which they came. (No wonder we're in a
muddle.)
But the fact remains, that it DOES make a difference. All things being
equal, a social pattern being reformed by intellectual should be more
moral, and therefore, more beneficial, than a social pattern being
reformed by a biological. That's the premise that set reform in motion.
But all things aren't ever equal, and it seems to me that if a social
pattern being reformed by intellectual doesn't reform those lower levels
in a quality way, in a quality evaluation that is perceived as a Quality
event at each level, it is certainly not moral at all. So Pirsig's
morality of higher patterns isn't easy to apply.
> In ZMM, Pirsig describes his vision of a future, or maybe
> a long gone, educational system. A student dropped out of
> school to do something he really liked to do. In time however,
> he wanted to know more about what he was doing, so he went
> back to school out of pure interest. Note that the final
> goal is not to make everyone come back to school to pursue
> their intellectual education, but to enable dynamic diversity.
yes
>
>
> Dropping out of school today is not socially acceptable, and
> I don't think it will be for a long time, so maybe this is not
> very helpful.
>
> What the educational system needs first, is a way to keep all
> students within the school anyway.
(or find a way for them to be out of school more. <grin>)
> Maybe a step by step expansion
> of the school's limits in terms of what is allowed to do.
The limits that are showing up here (in Ky.) are that when a "school" is
allowed to expand itself, it is more likely to reform other experience
into copies of itself than to reform itself to gain the value of the
added experience.
> The
> end goal would be to allow everyone to pursue whatever they
> liked, a distant but dynamic goal.
>
> I hope I haven't caused too much confusion. The educational
> system, and the Kentucky one in particular, is not my domain.
> So catch me if I stumbled somewhere.
>
Thanks. Maybe I'm just rambling. Push back if anything makes sense
enough to challenge.
Maggie
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