Hello all,
Gary here. Just a few comments They are lodged within the context of the
email laid out by David.
He begins:
> Mr. Thomas, Bodvar and Y'all:
>
> Some of the issues in this message could just as well be posted in the
> "failure of the Enlightenment" thread and/or in a new thread called
> something like "the historic emergence of, transition toward and dominance
> by the intellectual level". Sorry if it seems a little messy, but all
these
> things are very inter-related and complex.
>
> DMB had said:
> > Let's start with the first word many of us
> > learn as children; "no". Even this is an abstraction. A pre-verbal
infant
> > could just scream and cry to express displeasure, but the ability to say
> > "no" is distinctly different. Its a symbol. Its a phonetic
representation
>
> 3WD answered:
> That is unless that child's "no" is in response to your "distinction
> between social level thinking and intellectual level thinking." In which
> case the the following quotes from Lila apply to her thinking .....
>
> DMB says:
> Hmmm. It seems you are trying WAY too hard to disagree. Since a child can
> begin to utter the word "no" even before her first birthday, it seems
quite
> impossible that she could have anything to say about metaphysics. More
> likely, it would be about mashed peas or poopy diapers. C'mon 3WD, you
can't
> honestly believe a toddler would be quoting Pirsig. (Although my 2 year
old
> has been able to read his own name for while. :-) Please forgive my Dad
> pride.)
>
> About Galileo and his critic 3WD said:
> This is a common misinterpretation that shows up here time and time
> again. We have overwhelming evidence of very high level of intellectual
> "thinking" across a broad range of societies far far earlier than
> Galileo's, or Buddha's, or Jesus's time. What had not evolved nor rose
> to dominance was not "intellectual thinking" but an intellectual moral
> order:
>
> DMB answers:
> Overwhelming evidence? I doubt it, but if you'd care to submit some of
that
> evidence, I'm all eyes. It seems like a very difficult task simply because
> the historic records go back only so far. When we try to look back at the
> thoughts of people BEFORE Socrates and Buddha, things get very murky.
> Writing itself only goes back a few thousand years, and most of that is
> merely accounting.
>
> DMB goes further:
> I'd suggest that you'll find plenty of evidence of mythic thinking in
> pre-historic artifacts, such as the pyramid and stonehenge, which are
> religious, ritualistic buildings. Obviously, these extraordinary
structures
> demonstrate amazing skill and intelligence, but still can't rightly be
> called intellectual. I get the impression that too many people here assume
> that any thought is intellectual, but this is a mistake.
GARY'S RESPONSE: As Pirsig sets it out for us, I'll repeat myself by
re-quoting Pirsig. [This is from Lila's Child, the current edition, Pirsig
note 24:] "In Lila I never defined the intellectual level of the MOQ, since
everyone who is up to reading Lila already knows what "intellectual" means.
For purposes of MOQ
precision let's say that the intellectual level is the same as mind. It is
the collection and manipulation of symbols, created in the brain, that stand
for patterns of experience."
For Pirsig the 4th level is any thought, period. The Intellectual level is
not about intelligence. It is about human's who think. "Obviously, these
extraordinary structures
> demonstrate amazing skill and intelligence, but still can't rightly be
> called intellectual. " The only obvious thing here is that the statement
is wrong.
DMB continues:
I think Bo is quite
> right in asserting that such an assumption puts us right back into the SOM
> soup, reintroduces the mind/body problem and creates a number of other
> problems. Pirsig and Wilber both insist that there are realities BETWEEN
> biology and intellect. This is were social level thinking fits.
GARY'S RESPONSE: There is no such thing as "social level thinking".
Societies do not think, only individual humans think. Society is the
product of human individuals. The Social 3rd level is the cumulative result
of individual humans who have thoughts and made those thoughts manifest by
interacting with other humans. "Society" is a human term for an abstract
idea that has no ability to act other than through the actions taken by
individual humans. One last thing, the3rd and 4th level evolved together,
simultaneously. They were never separate. They can't exist without each
other. They don't exist without each other.
Gary signs off here.
DMB continurs: This is
> where Wilber's archaic, magic and mythic thinking fits. Both of them are
> presenting ideas that defy common sense notions because they are both
> defying SOM and this is designed to be an improvement upon common sense
> notions. See?
>
> DMB moves to the related topic:
> Surely there is a difference between the emergence of, establishment of,
> transition toward and dominance of the intellectual level. This makes alot
> of sense in an evolutionary scheme. The 4th level grows much like anything
> else. By analogy, it was most likely concieved in prehistoric times and
that
> event will forever remain undocumented. Its' birth must have occured in
the
> 5th century BC at the time of Socrates and Buddha. We could say it left
its'
> childhood in the Enlightenment period, and became to dominate society
after
> WWI, when Europes remaining monarchies lost out to democracies. This out
> line is not contradicted by the Pirsig quotes from 3WD.
>
> Pirsig:
> "Or, within historical time, the day Socrates died to establish the
> independence of intellectual patterns from their social orgins." p270
>
> Pirsig:
> "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
>
> DMB moves to the other related topic:
> This is the issue that could ought to be posted in the Enlightenment
thread;
> the dissociation of morals and science in the wake of the "Death of God".
> The failure was a matter of throwing the baby out with the bath water. In
an
> effort to make science distinct from the Church, to make rationality
> distinct from mythic thinking, the defect emerged, flatland emerged,
amoral
> scientific objectivity emerged. 3WD provided the right quote...
>
> Pirsig:
> "The defect is that subject-object science has no provisions for
> morals.... From the perspective of a subject-object science, the world
> is a completely purposeless, valueless place" pg 277-8
>
> About this defect 3WD said:
> So maybe those "common sense","salt of the earth", "down to earth",
> "couldn't be nicer", guys rather the being ignorant, as you suggest, are
> merely trying to maintain, or reintroduce a smiggen of values or morals
> in a world that seems "completely purposeless". I think it was James (or
> maybe Dewey) who said that in search of the truth, the Good, we must be
> ever vigilant for "the cries of the wounded."
>
> DMB says:
> Yea. As I said very early on in the "Failure" thread, both the pre-modern
> reactionary movements and the post-modern movements are a response to this
> defect in modernism. They're both wounded by the sense of purposelessness
> created by this same defect. Both are interested in reasserting a sense of
> meaning and puropse. BUT, oh what a difference there is between them. The
> reactionary movements would have us go back, would have us reject
modernity.
> The postmoderns, which includes hundreds of great thinkers from Kant to
> Wilber and Pirsig, would rather we repair the defect. The task is to
> re-integrate morals and science, to weave values into rationality. By
> analogy, the pre-moderns and the post-moderns both see that the car
doesn't
> work very well. The pre-moderns would have us un-invent the car and return
> to riding hoarses, while the post-moderns want to design a better car.
See?
> Big difference. All the difference in the world. And if the most moral
path
> is one that honors the ongoing process of dynamic evolution, the
postmoderns
> are clearly more moral. I hear the cries of the wounded. I am one of them,
> but there's no going back. Going backward is not only stupid, its immoral.
> See?
>
> Hope it was worth your time,
> DMB
>
>
>
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