Hi Marco:
> P:
> > Not only does he say that the
> > levels are exhaustive but that they are discrete. "They have very little
> > to do with one another." Your "birth" metaphor suggests that what
> > originates at one level grows into a higher level and becomes
> > influential in the higher level. Maybe so, but I find nothing in the MOQ
> > that supports your view.
>
> Pirsig says that *levels* are discrete and have very little to do with one
> other. But actually I was talking of *patterns*. My point is that when a
> level becomes leader of evolution, lower patterns can be used, empowered
> and refined and even enclosed into it. That's why biological emotions (you
> agreed that emotions are also biological) play an important role at the
> social and intellectual levels.
True. Thanks for correcting my misconception of your views.
> P:
> > I like your idea of considering the levels as resources, but I can think
> > of them that way without changing "belong" to have "birth." Birth and
> > resources don't match very well in a metaphorical sense.
> I don't follow you about this *metaphorical mismatch*. What are you meaning
> exactly? Anyway, I do prefer dropping "belong to" as it sounds very
> exclusive. If we say that marble "belongs to" the inorganic level, how does
> it happen that a monument has a great social and intellectual value? Pirsig
> speaks of hardware/software relation (that is by the way very similar to
> the matter/form concept of good old Aristotle). Saying that the artist uses
> inorganic marble as resource and then the monument is *at the same time* an
> inorganic and an intellectual pattern of value is IMO perfectly coherent
> with the MOQ, with common sense, and does not contradict the discreteness
> of the levels. In no way.
True. My problem with "birth" vs. "belong" is more a matter of taste than
anything else. I hesitate to rewrite what is written by any author I highly respect.
> > >M:
> > > And this way we can reconcile Pirsig's fixation on the "clash between
> > > levels" with Rog's good points on the possible "cooperation".
>
> P:
> > I wonder who is fixated here. Recall Pirsig's observation: "The ideal of
> > a harmonious society in which everyone without coercion cooperates
> > happily with everyone else for the mutual good of all is a devastating
> > fiction."
>
> This sentence happens to be one of your favorite! But IMHO you are making a
> bit of confusion: Pirsig is here speaking of a supposed natural cooperation
> between human beings. By the way, he adds: "if man is basically good, then
> maybe it is man's basic goodness which invented social institutions to
> repress this kind of biological savagery in the first place" and IMO that
> means that while cooperation is not natural (biological?) it has been a
> conquest of mankind at the social level.... and we have to be watchful to
> keep it working, if possible.
True. Note Pirsig's emphasis on social institutions which if I understand him
correctly are under attack not only from below but above.
> Anyway, I was talking of the clash between levels. That is a clash we all
> can firstly find even in ourselves, and has nothing to do with the quote
> you offer. I think Roger has made good points about the possible
> cooperation between the levels. My example of the river wants to include
> both Pirsig's and Roger's points. It is a resource we have to tame as long
> as it behaves according to pure inorganic patterns, an ally when it has
> been *convinced* to cooperate with / to behave according to our
> intellectual patterns of technology. Water technology is intellectual, and
> it could not exist without the river. That is: the river has become part of
> technology.
I don't follow your metaphor of the river. We have to tame all sorts of things at
the inorganic and biological levels by using our intellectual patterns. Isn't that
what "technology" means? Whether those lower patterns bend to our wishes
because we convince them to "cooperate" is quite a stretch. A better metaphor
would be a tax collector asking for your "cooperation" in paying taxes.
> > > M:
> > >So, why do I state that
> > > religion has birth at the intellectual level? Because IMHO it is not
> > > possible at all to Believe without abstraction and without
> self-awareness.
>
> P:
> > You suggest that abstraction and self-awareness were not present in
> > the social level before the intellectual level rose to full prominence,
> > meaning I suppose that a pre-Greek individual like an Egyptian had no
> > language or sense of self. This I doubt. By all accounts, religion arose
> > with earliest man, with the cave dwellers.
>
> Quite please. I've never said that "abstraction and self-awareness were not
> present in the social level before the intellectual level rose to *full
> prominence* ". I think I have to make myself more clear. Pirsig says
> that the predominance of intellect over society begins during the XXth
> century. He also shows that the first clear steps in that direction were
> made probably in Athens 3000 years ago. But he never says exactly (he could
> not) *when* the first intellectual patterns did emerge.
True.
> In Lila, chapter 30, we can clearly read (and this happens to be my
> favorite passage:-) ):
>
> «.. anthropological studies of contemporary primitive tribes suggest that
> stone age people were probably bound by ritual all day long. There's a
> ritual for washing, for putting up a house, for hunting, for eating and so
> on - so much that the division between "ritual" and "knowledge" becomes
> indistinct. In cultures without books ritual seems to be a public library
> for teaching the young and preserving common values and information».
>
> « These rituals may be the connecting link between the social and the
> intellectual levels of evolution. One can imagine primitive song-rituals
> and dance-rituals associated with certain cosmology stories, myths, which
> generated the first primitive religions. From these the first intellectual
> truths could have been derived».
>
> As you see, the "first primitive religions" are connected with the
> development of the "first intellectual truths" (I'd add also with the first
> forms of art). And this is more or less what I'm trying to say. If we ask
> "which comes first?" I guess that abstraction comes first than religion, as
> it is impossible to Believe in a supreme Spiritual Entity without
> abstraction. It was still an intellect completely servant of social
> patterns, nevertheless it was intellect. The process I think we can sketch
> from these pages (and from Pirsig's Cruising Blues paper) is that ritual
> division of labor leads to isolation, and isolation leads to self
> awareness.
>
> « As one lives on the surface of the empty ocean day after day after day
> and sees it sometimes huge and dangerous, sometimes relaxed and dull, but
> always, in each day and week, endless in every direction, a certain
> understanding of one's self begins slowly to break through, reflected from
> the sea, or perhaps derived from it.
>
> This is the understanding that whether you are bored or excited, depressed
> or elated, successful or unsuccessful, even whether you are alive or dead,
> all this is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever. The sea keeps telling
> you this with every sweep of every wave. And when you accept this
> understanding of yourself and agree with it and continue on anyway, then a
> real fullness of virtue and self-understanding arrives. And sometimes the
> moment of arrival is accompanied by hilarious laughter» (RMP, Cruising
> Blues)
>
> Again, IMO I'm perfectly coherent with the MOQ, and with common sense.
True. I retract anything I said or implied otherwise.
P:
> > Further, if you look at today's
> > religious fundamentalists you won't find much intellect there.
>
> Maybe they are merely still at that stage: intellect servant of social
> predominance.
True. They are at the tribal stage, and today we find ourselves engaged in a
rerun of the ancient clash between tribalism and civilization.
Since you have a such an accurate picture of planet MOQ, perhaps it's time to
stop orbiting around it, land on it and wholeheartedly embrace it. (-:
Platt
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