On 11 Apr 2002 at 22:19, Wim Nusselder wrote:
To Rick:
> I agree that Pirsig seemed to think that a new level starts in the
> service of the next lower level and so do I. I only didn't find a
> quote that stated that unequivocally and I disputed Bo's conclusion
> that a level starts as a PART of that lower level.
Dear Rick and Wim
- the only MOQ interested left on the scene :-).
Thanks to Rick for coming to my rescue. The said quotation was exactly
what I had been searching for. Wim is a formidably debater and won't
let me off my own hook that easily. I haven't yet got the annotated "Lila
Child" yet (ordered by snail mail) and was a little taken aback when I
learned that Pirsig thus directly had criticise my utterings on this point,
however I KNEW that there were passages in LILA like the one that
Rick provided.
In the service of or part of? When - say - biological life was all there
was, the first "banding together" of humans to protect the tribe were "in
the service of life", i.e: BIOLOGICAl value. Yet, the least amount of
cooperation puts a certain limitation on the individual so in that sense
the SOCIAL was already present. This overlapping is my point so I think
we are right .. all of us.
> The quote from 'Lila' p. 170 you offer indeed shows the same type of
> weakening of the word 'society' Pirsig criticizes in 'Lila's Child'.
> He apparently learned from the confusion 'Lila' caused on the Web...
> In this quote he doesn't use the widening of the meaning of 'society'
> to blur the distinction between the biological and social level
> however.
I see no weakening of the word "society's" or of any other level's
integrity, but think it's useful to point to this fuzziness/overlapping as
what causes the level dependency. Intellect's relationship with Society
is what we have been discussing the most, but it goes all the way
down. How early LIFE can be said to have been "in the service of"
MATTER is not all clear, could it be more useful to simply say that (the
patterns of) all levels grow in complexity until one such (pattern) is a
"purpose of its own": A new level?
Bo
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