Hi Bo, Rick,
a quick intervention.....
BO:
> Now, Pirsig speaks about dynamic intervention starting with the Zuñi
> example in chapter 9 and it sounds as if society is directly influenced,
but
> the Brujo could only do what he did because he had learned to deal with
the
> white (intellect-dominated) culture (please intellctual 'value', not
> 'intelligence'). Pirsig points out that som-steeped anthropology "..tried
to
> show only those aspects of Zuñi culture that were independent of the white
> culture" (p.177) and that was not right in his quality view.
>
Pirsig:
«The anectode was a case-history in which there was a conflict of morality.
It concerned a Pueblo Indian who lived in Zuñi, New Mexico, in the
nineteenth century»
«Phaedrus thought that if he had to pick one day when the shift from social
domination of intellect to intellectual domination of society took place, he
would pick November 11, 1918»
Marco:
Just for precision, according to Pirsig the white culture of the19th century
was all but intellect-dominated. It was at the contrary the apex of social
dominance.
About the possibility for the lower levels to evolve, let me point out that
geneticists identify 4 different aspects of biological evolution:
mutation (emergence of new characteristics)
migration (import of new characteristics from a diverse compatible
population)
natural selection (survival of the fittest within the environment)
genetic drift (survival of the luckiest - see my 3 August 2002 post on it)
More or less, the same happens with social pattern of values (someone would
say memes).
I'd say that a social mutation with no intellectual intervention is rare and
slow (if compared with intellectual mutations). In this I'm close to Bo,
even if I'd not say that a social mutation is impossible, just it is almost
imperceptible. But the other three kinds of evolution are possible.
Example:
In my town there is only one restaurant.
A Chinese comes and opens a Cantonese restaurant (mutation by migration)
The Cantonese restaurant can't work for the impossibility to import Chinese
food at a reasonable cost, so only the Italian restaurant survives (survival
of the fittest)
Alternatively, could be that the only Italian cook dies suddenly after a car
crash, so only the Cantonese restaurant lives on (survival of the luckiest)
[actually the genetic drift is not that, anyway the example works]
Here I'd say that these changes can be more or less good and dynamic...
anyway not intellect driven. I'd add that I could invent a new cuisine and
open a totally new restaurant (mutation) but it is really a rare event. And
I guess it would take a lot of time to get a stable social POV. In my
opinion the case of Zuñi is an evolution by migration of social values from
a social context to another social context. In times of globalization, I see
it happening everyday and everywhere, without intellectual "plans".
Ciao,
Marco
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