Hi Bo, John and alii
First things first, I'd like to thank you, John, for having pointed Ken
Wilber out for me. I've finished reading "A Brief History of Everything" and
found it intensely interesting. It clears up a lot of points that Pirsig
left unclear, and is generally a fun read ! ;)
"Sex, Ecology and Spirituality" is definitely on my book list ! ;)
...
As for you Bo, I think I finally understand the root of our disagreement
about Society, Intellect and the frontiers of both. That, I believe, came
from seeing Pirsig's work from another angle. Thanks again to Wilber for
that.
I'll try here to explain your position, mine and the roots of both (as I
understand it). If I feel up to it, I'll even try to work out a solution on
which we might both agree.
> Denis and Groupe.
> You wrote:
>
> > Well, Bo, you'll be pleased to know that after having fought your
> > SOLAQI idea for so long, I'm starting to believe you might have had
> > the right idea all along.
[snip]
> This is very encouraging Denis, but you soon part company <sob>.
Don't worry old friend, we'll soon understand each other. :)
[snip]
BO:
> Yes, I remember the intellect/intelligence thread and believe we
> were on the right track, but to limit myself l just say that I agree
> with your "... up to the conceptual side ... which is language and a
> great leap, yet NOT the social-intellect transition. More about this
> point lower down.
>
DENIS:
> > My problem with SOLAQI was that SOM (according to Pirsig) had been
> > created by the Greeks, which meant that (in your SOLAQI
> > interpretation) prior to them, Intellect didn't exist, as such. That I
> > (still) believe is an aberration. Religions are as much a product of
> > the Intellect as Science is.
BO:
> I think that Pirsig meant that the Greek experience was the birth of
> SOM - not its conception - so at this point my (SOM=Intellect)
> idea does not violate the MoQ. What we now call "mythologies"
> were the social value centered vision of the universe, while the
> Christian Church of today has capitulated to the intellect-centered
> vision. Again I spot your intellect-as-the-place- where-we-make-
> models-of-reality emerge :-).
As we can see, our problem is that we cannot agree where the social level
stops and the intellectual one starts.
You Bo, perhaps as Pirsig, believe that it was *born* (as the above quote
confirms) under the Greek experience of Plato and Aristotle. Yet I place its
beginning at the birth of human language (I should say languages).
Why do we disagree on this ? I believe it is in part because of the fact
Pirsig seemed to mix two different aspect of society in his (summary)
description of the social level. On one part society is made of
institutions, police forces, churches, cities and law courts, and on the
other part it is made of laws, customs, morals and ideals. No distinctions
are made at the social level about what "visible forms" society takes, and
what "invisibles forces" drive human societies.
But it is VERY important to make this distinction if one is to understand
what separates human social groups from animal social groups ! One cannot
say that animals have societies (as they obviously do) on the same level
than humans. Human societies are shaped by forces no animal, not even higher
mammals like dogs, dolphins or apes, could *ever* hope to master !
The gap between human societies and animal ones is so ENORMOUS, that there
MUST have been a jump in level between the two. More intuitively, what we
all can *sense* about this huge gap, is that it takes place in
CONSCIOUSNESS. By this term I don't mean intellect, but this interior image
that all higher life forms gifted with a brain share. I think we can all
sense that the interior world even of a child far surpasses that of most
other life forms, and in a fundamental way : imagination.
We think abstractly, we project, we imagine, we invent images that do not
come *directly* from experience, but that *rearrange* experience for our
pleasure. We paint, we tell stories, we invent fairy creatures from mixing
the shapes of the creatures we've seen, we believe in magic (step on a
crack, break your mother's back...). In short, we play with concepts.
Abstract images. And these come from language, the possibility of expressing
more than the bare necessities of survival and social interplay.
In short, this is the quantum leap from the social level into the
intellectual one.
Now, I know you do not believe that (or at least you do not agree with my
conclusion) because it would mean that Intellect as been brought down to the
social level. And you are right.
Primitive human consciousness was absolutely, totally social. Language was
used to explain why the tribe or kingdom was the best there was, how the
gods favored it above all others, how the king's dick was longer than any
other's, etc. ad nauseam... If THAT was intellect, then I understand why you
feel so down about my interpretation. And it lasted, as you state lower, for
thousands upon thousands of years. "Me king Hammurabi, I have fathered more
sons than the rain has drops, etc." Even the first use of WRITING, that most
superb achievement of human intelligence, was still in the service of the
social side.
Therefore, Intellect can only be worthy of this title when it has realized
its *real* personal purpose : to find meaning, yes, but INDEPENDENTLY of the
social dictates. Therefore Logos above Mythos, therefore Truth, and
therefore SOM. So in your view, human consciousness spent the first
thousands of years as a function of the social level before making the
quatum leap from social use to intellectual use, becoming Intellect in the
process.
More about this lower...
DENIS:
> > There are stages of development in human consciousness, and the
>
BO:
> Certainly - but "...in human consciousness" carries a heavy load of
> SOM's mind-intellect). Sorry for harping on this.
It's OK, I can see where you're coming from now... :)
Human consciousness has a social level, there is no denying this, and I
agree that some people seem hopelessly stuck at this level. All good
fanatics are made of this wooden-headed stock...
It is the reign of total conformism, of doubt as sin, of the world made
manifest by the power of the Word. There is only one interpretation that is
correct, and that is the credo of my tribe, my people, my party. It is the
world of the flat earth. Strangely, one of the most intellectual ideology,
Marxism, is the most recent incarnation of that flat-earth view...
> > philosophy of the greeks and the rational age of Enlightenment
> > certainly mark the "adolescent rebellion" and "coming of age" of
> > Intellect. But its birth you can trace much further back, IMHO, into
> > the first civilization of cave-painters.
>
> D'accord! Also, in ZAMM P. says that we tend to forget the
> enormous time span between the last caveman and the first Greek
> philosopher. Tens of thousand of years when prehistoric man both
> spoke and figured out complicated theories of origin and
> destination. But there was none who said: "Is this objectively true
> or just a subjective myth". The last is Q-Intellect - not language as
> such - and the final showdown was the Age of Enlightenment
> (Science vs Church).
This, for you, is the quantum leap in human consciousness.
And this is were I should start to introduce you to Ken Wilber.
> > Our times seems to be the next stage, where Intellect, after having
> > left home (social conventions) banging the door behind itself, finally
> > settles down and starts to acquire a bit of wisdom, and a sense of its
> > own mortality. And starts thinking about having a child of its own,
> > perhaps... ;)
>
> Precisely! Yet no level "recognize" any development above itself.
> Intellect will be S/O for ever, and resist any deviation. Isn't that
> exactly what we watch at this forum: Intellect trying to make the
> MoQ toe its line? Intellect (Reason) is the highest good, but not the
> end of the line. We won't become irrational if transcending it, no
> more than we can become disembodied or asocial.
Ken Wilber also believes "Reality" to be composed of stratas, the totality
of which he calls a holarchy (a hierarchy of "holons" ; for now, consider
holons similar to Pirsig's "patterns of value"), one that goes from
sub-atomic particules to the highest forms of consciousness. In "A Brief
History of Everything", he states that the big breakthrough of postmodern
thinking (with "modern" being the paradigm of the Age of Enlightenment) is
to recognize that models, metaphysics and all conceptual representations of
reality are really just man-made divisions of a fundamental unity. I myself
stated once that all metaphysics were only systems of beliefs, but that the
great novelty of the MOQ was that it was a system of belief that recognized
itself as such !!! It's not only a better map than SOM, but also one that
recognize itself as a map : just re-read the beginning of chp. 9 in 'Lila'.
Pirsig is clearly in that postmodern camp, and until Wilber, was the most
clearly postmodern philosopher there ever was ! He had understood that no
rationality could go on forever without ending up eating itself ! The next
stage wasn't only a possible future, it was a necessity !
Evolve, or die.
We have to integrate that thought, deep within ourselves : the MOQ is a map,
SOM is a map, but only way the MOQ can stay a "better" map is by avoiding
the trap of modern materialism : becoming a dogma.
There is one thing I found interesting in Wilber's book, and I'll quote him
now (it's translated form english to french to english again : so be
indulgent ;) :
"Now, to know what precisely constitutes a "level" [in the holarchy], is
pretty much arbitrary. It's like a house with three "floors". We can count
each floor as being a level, like we usually do, and the house would then
have a depth of three - three levels. But we could also count each stairs'
step as a level, and each stair can have twenty steps. We would then say
that the house has sixty levels, or a depth of sixty.
What's important, is that even if those gradations are relative or
arbitrary, the relative places, them, aren't arbitrary. Whether the house
has three or sixty levels, the second one is still higher than the first
one."
"A Brief History of Everything", Chp. 2
So, it's not important whether or not Intellect starts with Language or with
Greek philosophy, what is important is that in each case, a new stage has
been reached, and that we agree at least on that evolution. What I call "the
adolescent rebellion of Intellect", and you "the birth of Intellect", only
affect the definition of Intellect, not the evolutive process itself, which
is centered on a change in consciousness, which has each time provoked huge
changes at a macro-level (from the animal familial unit into the mythology
of the tribe, or from the mythic agrarian kingdom into the industrial
nation-state).
So, if we are finally to agree on a definition of Intellect, I think we have
to accept that not only a huge change has been reached when human Language
was born, but that a second one has also been reached with SOM.
So we need another level, which I think we could call the "mythical level" :
the passage of the social structure into conceptual images.
And you are right, all postmodernist thought points to an even higher level,
beyond the rational, that Pirsig and Wilber have been the first to see : the
model-centered consciousness, where all models coexist hierarchically in
regard to the basic unity of reality : Quality (or the Tao, etc.).
That could be a new level, one that only a very few people ever manage to
reach, but also the one that could finally get us out of the SOM trap.
Because we won't get out of this by making the MOQ the new dogma, there is
no doubt in my mind about that. I now we agree at least on that, if I
understand your above comment : "Isn't that exactly what we watch at this
forum: Intellect trying to make the MoQ toe its line? Intellect (Reason) is
the highest good, but not the end of the line."
[snip]
> > Yes, that's one I'm keeping too. First, communication. Then, arbitrary
> > signs for communication, which multiply the number of possible signs.
> > Therefore the dynamicity of the whole increases tenfold, making it
> > possible to go for the next DQ stage : meaning !
>
> Is "meaning" a possible 5th level or..? No sarcasm just curious.
No, I think meaning is too general a term to be a good definition of the
evolution we're talking about. "Meaning" is just what appears with the
"mythological level".
>
> > "They are in their own right" ?! Bo, these are words about reality,
> > not reality itself.
>
> Hmmmm. You possibly spot the backfiring effect here ;-), but
> seriously: The first axiom of the MoQ is that subjective/objective is
> NOT the primary split (DQ/SQ is!!), consequently one of its off-
> springs (words/reality) cannot be used against it later. If the first
> postulate is deemed invalid objections must be brought at that
> early point?
>
> OK Pirsig says ...etc, but give him a break.
Excuse me but I cannot... ;)
The next level will emerge ONLY if we understand and accept at the deepest
level of our psyches the difference between words and reality. If we don't,
then the MOQ is just another dogma, no better than any other before it, and
in fact even worse. You cannot pass off as a mistake the MOST important
thing Pirsig ever said !
[snip]
> I would have liked to say more, but my post is too long already!
If only I had more of your wisdom ! ;)
My posts always seem to be stretching into infinity... I'll follow your
example, and end it now.
As always, I'm, looking forward to your comments.
Denis
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