Hi 3WD, DMB, All:
3WD writes:
> Now, as my last post indicated, I do think DMB position reflects
> Pirsig's if he is talking about when the intellectual level first came to
> dominate the social level as the following quote make abundently clear.
>
> > "Phaedrus though is he had to pick one day when the shift from social
> > dominance of intellect to intellectual dominance of society took place,
> > he would pick November 11,1918, Armistice Day, the end of World War I."
> > pg 270.... "The new culture that has emerged is the first in history to
> > believe that patterns of society must be subordinate to patterns of
> > intellect." pg. 304
>
> But that is a whole different issue from when the intellect first
> evolved or emerged.
Yes, the intellect as a moral order containing patterns of value emerged,
as 3WD points out, 'once the complex human neocortex evolved' and
the first attempt at asking and answering the crucial intellectual
questions, 'Where am I?', 'How do I know it?' and 'What should I do?'
arose. These concepts had right and wrong answers based on the
intellectual moral order of the time which happened to be based on what
we look down upon today as stupid myths. Although we pooh-pooh the
assumptions on which the rights and wrongs of intellect of those early
times were based, it did its job of Dynamically improving and preserving
society or we wouldn't be here to criticize it today.
Pirsig identifies 'twentieth century intellectuals' who have come to
dominate society since World War I as adopting the intellectual moral
order of subject-object science where it is 'right' to be objective and
'wrong' to let your emotions influence the 'truth.' This moral order or
pattern of value has a defect in it. Because of this defect, its attempts to
dominant society have been disastrous. It remains to be seen how long
humans will survive if SOM domination of society continues unabated.
What makes me smile about the superior attitude of today's
intellectuals to the those of the past is that today's intellectual worldview
is based on myths, too. Among current assumptions are that the
universe arose by chance, that the only things that are real consist of
matter & energy in space/time, that there is no purpose to evolution and
that scientific principles are the only proper forms of explanation and
understanding. These beliefs are not based on repeated experiments
the way Newton's laws are. They are myths which tell you what you
should be prepared to count as evidence. They set out a basic
worldview, just one competing metaphysical scheme among others--and
as the 20th century showed, not a very good one to dominant society
with. Unfortunately, the postmodern worldview that all views are equally
true (but that their view is truer than most) doesn't offer much hope
either. In fact, if you look at today's intellectuals who have tenure in the
world's universities, can you name anyone whose views you would vote
for to dominant society?
One thing the Enlightenment did bring us of lasting value was the moral
right of intellect to be free of social control--the rights of free speech,
freedom of assembly, freedom of travel, etc. But, as Pirsig suggests, we
might want to dust off and examine, fairly and impartially, the old
Puritan and Victorian social codes to "see what they were trying to
accomplish and what they actually did accomplish towards building a
stronger society." Why? Because the moral patterns of intellect as
championed by today's theory classes haven't done a very good job.
And nothing on the horizon promises to do any better, except the MOQ
of course. (-:
Platt
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