From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Fri Oct 18 2002 - 18:53:49 BST
Hi all,
Finally got to the article recommended by Thomas a while back, about Islamic
responses to Western power. However, next to that article was one about
suicide bombers and their psychology, which was even more interesting. One
extract:
"...at least some common features. They [the suicide terrorists] grow up in
closed societies with the emphasis on obedience; a critical attitude, so
dear to the West in modern times, is absent. The individual counts for very
little, the collective is all-important."
The argument is essentially that the individual that carries out a suicide
attack has been indoctrinated into certain values, and (literally) cannot
think outside the box in which they have been put.
Two thoughts struck me when I read that passage. One is that it seems a very
good example for distinguishing the social level from the level above it. A
suicide bomber is essentially a social unit, a unit of the family, tribe,
nation, Giant that is being employed to serve the interests of that larger
grouping.
The second was that the capacity to break out from that social conditioning
depends upon the ability to distinguish oneself as an individual apart from
the various social roles that are played. I recall Alasdair MacIntyre (in
After Virtue) discussing Homeric virtue (the arete that Pirsig also
discusses in ZMM) and he argues that "morality and social structure are in
fact one and the same in heroic society. There is only one set of social
bonds. Morality as something distinct does not yet exist. Evaluative
questions *are* questions of social fact. It is for this reason that Homer
speaks always of *knowledge* of what to do and how to judge." It is only
when there is some sense of self as something apart from those social roles
(eg husband or wife, child or parent, noble or slave) that there is the
possibility of judgement about what is right - in MoQ terms, that openness
to DQ depends upon a degree of detachment from the social role.
This was an issue that was worked through by the tragedians before it was
examined by Socrates, and before that breakthrough was fully static latched
by Aristotle with his account of the virtues, judgement and eudaimonia.
Which seems to offer some support to my suspicion that the fourth level
needs to be described as the level of the individual, not the intellectual.
It seems to me that the emphasis on *intellect* is to narrow the criteria
for fourth level thinking too far, it is to focus too much on rational (and
metaphysical) criteria. Whereas, if the fourth level is understood as the
ability to form an independent judgement - that is, the ability to be
'semi-detached' from the social role - then a much fuller and richer MoQ
would seem to result, which would avoid some of the problems that Pirsig
runs into, and which John B, amongst others, has focussed on.
So my thesis is this: the fourth level needs to be understood as the level
of the individual, not the level of the intellectual (the former *contains*
the latter as one constituent part) and therefore we need to focus on
Sophocles, not Socrates.
(Which, before anyone else points it out, is to indulge a taste for a snappy
title at the expense of accuracy - Aeschylus was first, but 'Aeschylus not
Socrates' doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?)
Comments welcome!
Sam
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