Hi platt and DMB:
> > Platt said:
> > Pirsig isn't exactly in love with academic intellectuals, so I guess
>your indictment of us just plain folks includes him.
> >
> > DMB says:
> > Pirsig, in fact and in deed, has spent years as a student, as a college
>professor, as a technical writer, as a novelist, and as a metaphyical
>philosopher. To lump him in with "just plain folks" is absurd. To try to
>paint him as anti-intellectual is totally ridiculous.
Elliot:
Both of you are arguing valid points. DMB has a good point in that as
humans are part of intellectual, social, biological and inorganic patterns,
they may behave in any of those ways. Some are too biological for my
tastes, only desiring to gorge themselves and fuck all day, ignoring social
decency and never having much of a thought ("when he has an original thought
he forgets it right away"). Some, like the victorians and rush limbaugh
(whom i really know nothing about) are really far to social and prefer mores
to original ideas, but shun biological impulses. And some dwell to a large
degree in the intellectual realm (but also have other level impulses). then
some just sit still all the time absorbing light waves, good old inorganic
level folk (ha). DMB keep reading, i'll come back to you.
Platt has a great point in that Pirsig would despise the sort of eliteism
that says intellectual values are mostly found in acedemia. Actually, as
noam chomsky points out, many acedemics have been so influenced by the
social level by their education (indoctrination) that their thoughts are
severly limited to a certain social framework. these intellectuals operate
on a level below thought often times and their education takes over. I know
lots of philosophy teachers who have said things so barborous that they
could not possibly have thought much about it themselves but were only
regergetating. but DMB has a point in that the more educated are probably
more inclined to "think for themselves".
But David, this notion of yours about the 3rd and fourth levels cannot fly.
You want to make both homoginized language and original sentances part of
the social and to the intellectual level you leave what? I see that you
have taken this language derived symbols thing and equated it to "thinking
about thinking". But this line is far to blurry. Pirsig mentions that what
he liked about william james was that he asked the seemingly un important
philosophical questions, like wether the man got around the squirrle or not.
Many "intellectuals" consider that unimportant. What makes you so clear
that you can differentiate important questions from unimportant ones (the
only real distinction i can find in you between the social and intellectual
levels). questions like "who would be a better president" i could see as
being either social or intellectual.
What Pirsig was really going for with the language derived symbols thing i
think was to differentiate words which can be made into sentances (that is
words as symbols derived from language) from say the flag of a country (not
derived from language). in a flag there is not subject (of the sentace) and
no object, nothing is happening, it is a symbol and thats it (sentances like
have a good day and how ya doin'? take on a similar face). but any sentace
that isnt horribly cliche requires an intellect to develope it (orwell's
"politics and the english language" is about making writing an intellectual
pursuit again, i believe, rather than a string of social conventions and
cliches that lack luster).
I agree with Gary, thinking cannot possibly be a social level action because
it takes place entirely inside the individual and not in the greater
society. Language, although it exsists embedded in every individual, takes
place in society and doesnt "happen" within the individual. Your (i think
its your) idea that intellectual processes involve using non-standard
definitions (you or someone else mentioned this earlier) i believe Pirsig
would reject entirely. Pirsig tries his best to use dictionary words so
that his ideas can be understood, when he reformulates a word he is actually
just creating a society of a few individuals who accept the newly mediated
definition.
People may act truly socially, but 1. this requires not thinking or reducing
thought to a minimum, 2. we cannot deny their exsistance as intellectual
beings. this is why i argue for a wide definition of social, because if
social is only humans then we get some people trying to weed out the smaller
level of intellect out of that group, when infact all humans belong to the
intellectual level.
Elliot
And Platt, are you sure your not confusing Marx with Lenin? the Vanguard
party was Lenin's idea and he had to reject many of the basic principals of
Marx to come up with it. Marx had the utmost respect for lay men.
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