Mind if I but in?
On Mon, 26 Oct 1998, Kilian Betlach wrote:
>Hi Lithien:
>
>> what confused me was that i thought their planning out an ambush would
>> qualify as strategy which would be in the intellect province.
>>
>> what do you think?
>>
>
>This is a hard question to answer, because it calls into question, (to a
>certain extent) the nature of the human condition. Do humans have
>instincts? If so, are they violent ones, as Freud contended? Most
>predatory animals have the capacity to set up "ambushes" through
>stalking of prey etc., but I doubt few would argue that animals are
>capable of realzing the "intelectual" level of SQ. I suppose I would
>say that the driving force, the inspiration so to speak, behind the
>action existed on the biological level, but that the means with which it
>was carried out were contained within the intellectual sphere. Can an
>action exist on one or more levels simultaneously? Or can such an
>activity, when disected, contain more than one level? Common sense says
>"yes" but I'm not sure what this metaphysics would say.
>
>Kilian
First, I don't think using stratagy to ambush someone counts as
Intllectual value-rhythms. Pirsig (I think we've more-or-less established)
says that the first Int. value pattern appeared when Socrates drank the
hemlock -- this is thinking/"logic" used not for bilogical/survilve values
or social/statuss values... this is using the old noodle out of a value
for "the Truth" -- and, in LILA, he says that IntPoVs didn't fully form
until 1918. I think we should keep stuff like that in mind because it
keeps us from confusing IntPoVs w/ just "thinking."
Clearly seting an ambush is a thougt-process. And it even involves
a bit of "logic" (term used loosly here -- not to be confused w/ formal
logic): "Hmmm... If I ambush my enimies w/ a gun I will be able to defeat
them much easier." That's not hard to figure out. Even a (socially)
primative homo-sapian can come up w/ -ambush- or -trap- or -weapon-. I
don't think there's anything particuarly *intellectual* about that.
I shy away from saying that a monkey using a rock to smash open a
coconut is an example of Int. values. It's not. That's a
highly-developed, sophisticated expression of bilogical value: Desire for
food.
Second point:
There is another angle to examine this from. While those boys are
acting against social values -- they are also acting out of some social
values. The value of status or recognition... Remember, they didn't shoot
those people for food or survivle... It wasn't their biological values
which were threatened (survivle, procreation), and they weren't fighting
for any intellectual values (the Truth!); it was their social selves
which were in some way stressed to the breaking point. I know it sounds
strange at first, but when looked at in a certain way, you can see that
they were acting primarily on the social level when they attacked. A 13
year old boy going on shooting spree isn't the same as thing as a bear
attack. He's trying -- in some disturbed, "insane" way -- to improve his
*social* sittuation... he's just using a very brutal, and socially
undesierable (immoral) method to do so. Do you get what I'm saying?
Murder is an act of insanity/evil. These are Social terms. The
(negative) value of insanity/evil does not exist in the biological realm
(whose negative values are death and not continuing the bloodline) nor at
the intellectual level (whose negative values are falshood, unclearity,
mere (pure) subjectivity...).
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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