Hi David & all,
I have really got to go for today but...one last quick reply. Longer reply
some other day.
> Gary:
>
> Thanks for the tip, but I'm already quite familiar with Wilber and admire
> him greatly. In fact, he lives nearby, or at least he used to, and I was
> lucky enought to meet him at a concert. (Jimmy Dale Gilmore, the
Zen-country
> musican) I'm not certain, but I may even be the one who introduced his
work
> to this group.
>
> As to the newspaper example you provide, I think its un-necessarily
> complicated and would rather address the issue in a different way. Let's
> just skip the first two levels becasue that much is pretty obvious.
Instead,
> let's just move to the newspaper example as I included in the list of
> examples. There I'd bascially said that reading a newspaper is a social
> level activity and by contrast doing an analysis of the media is an
> intellectual activity. Here's why....
>
> In reading the paper you learn what happened, you learn what has been
> reported. For the most part the stories will be about crime, politics,
> business, sports and that sort of thing. Its all social level stuff that
> you're learning about. Yea, there are sometimes book reviews and such, but
> even there what you're reading rarely rises to the 4th level.
>
> Media analysis, by contrast, doesn't just report what happened. It
examines
> what kinds of things were reported and more importantly what kinds of
things
> were NOT reported. It looks at issues of bias, imbalance, the market
forces
> and cultural pressures that cause bias and imbalance. It asks questions
> about trends in reporting and the various perceptions of readers ABOUT the
> news they're getting.
>
> All of the contrasting example work essentially the same way. Thinking is
> social, but thinking ABOUT thinking is intellectual. Reading is social,
but
> reading ABOUT reading is intellectual. Understanding is social, but to
> grapple with the nature of knowledge is intellecutal. See? They're both
> mental activities, they're both subjective experiences in the sense that
it
> happens internally. But also they both can be exterior, objective and out
in
> public view. Clearly, both newspapers and books of media analysis are
> objects that anyone can see and purchase. Which brings me to a criticism
of
> what you've written...
>
> I don't think your hypothesis is confusing, as in too complicated for me
to
> understand. Instead, I think its confused. As I understand it, its does
not
> work and is even contaminated by logical contradictions. For example, you
> were quite happy to agree with the idea that everything is BOTH an
> individual entity AND part of a larger collective system. But at the same
> time you assert that the social level is collective and the intellectual
> level is individualistic. That is a logical contradiction. See?
>
>
Gary's new response: In my "David reads the newspaper while Gary observes"
analysis I was laying everything out in a Pirsig map/language. With just a
little overlay from Koestler/Wilber/Jaron. Pirsig separates Intellectual
and Social as two levels without any internal/external or part/whole
analysis. I was just trying to apply some of that Holonic attributes to
make my point of the interplay of all the levels all at once. If you really
want me to I can redo the whole analysis as I believe it should be, but I
would have to go beyond Pirsig and truly incorporate Wilber's four Integral
fields, Koestler's Holarchical arrangements and my one spin on things. Sure
I could do it. And I think I will not have any logical contradictions but
will such a non-Pirsig analysis get read, considered or accepted. This is a
Pirsig worldview site and not a general metaphysics site. So how far can I
go? Do you really want me to explode out of Pirsig and into a Full Grand
Unified Metaphysics of Ultimate Reality?
[How's that for delusions of grandeur!]
I like your joke. But .... I just had to know what your thoughts were. I
got it the first time. I try to wait patiently before you responded to
acknowledge the elegance of the joke. But.....I am impatient, sometimes.
Hard pressed for time,
Gary
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