hello everyone
there have been so many good emails of late, some i agree with, some that i
dont. but thats neither here nor there. they all reflect the enormous amount
of thinking that has gone into them, and it makes me very happy to be
involved with a group of such innovative and creative thinkers as the Lila
Squad. Thank you for sharing, everyone.
Donny wrote:
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.
Donny, i tend to disagree with your assumption here and i believe Pirsig
does as well in Lila, page 344..."Within this evolutionary relationship it
is possible to see that intellect has functions that predate science and
philosophy. The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover
an ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its
historical purpose has been to help society find food, detect danger, and
defeat enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it
invents for this purpose."
after reading this passage, the monkey opening a coconut with a stone is
clearly an example of the intellect at work. certainly it is a biologically
driven need that the monkey feels, but how did the monkey learn to use the
rock to smash open the coconut? i would guess by seeing other monkeys do it,
perhaps its mother. so the monkey is using a social event to learn an
intellectual exercise to facilitate the satisfying of a biologically driven
desire for food.
Lithien wrote:
i guess the reason i thought murder would qualify for the intellectual level
is that biologically we kill to eat, but this was no such thing. murder
seems to be a breaking of the social rule "Thou shall not murder". in other
words, persons who think themselves above the law and do not hesitate in
disregarding the social mores against it. like Crime and Punishment, for
instance.
have you read the novel?
Lithien, in the passage i quoted above from chap. 24 in Lila, Pirsig says
that
"Its [the intellect]
historical purpose has been to help society find food, detect danger, and
defeat enemies." and Crime and Punishment ties in so well here too! the
intellect can only affect the biological level by going thru the social
level. in Crime and Punishment what struck me most was the intricate social
level that left little to intellectualize about. the justice system worked
because basic human needs and instincts had been built into the social level
in such a complex way that all the police inspector had to do was wait
patiently for the perpetrator of the crime to confess. there was never any
doubt that he would.
since this story was written at a time before the intellect had 'taken over'
for the social level, its easy to see the differences in todays crimes, many
of which seem more intellectually motivated that anything else. once the
intellect becomes dominate, it no longer wants to be held in sway by the
lower social level values. the intellect desires freedom! and there is great
danger in unchecked freedom, as we see with our young people bringing
firearms to school and shooting their classmates and teachers. we NEED the
social restraints but the intellect rebells against them. perhaps realizing
why this happens is a first step to preventing repeat occurences.
Jonathan wrote:
Pirsig was surely wrong in placing Intellect at a higher moral level
than Society.
***Intellectual freedom from social responsibility is immoral. ***
Pirsig was also wrong to place Social values above Biological values.
Societies which valued flag, country and national wealth over human life
sacrificed millions of young men in WW1 and sent children down the
mines.
I agree with Fintan, there has been FAR TOO MUCH intellectual
masturbation here.
Masturbation is fun (that's my excuse), but hardly moral.
Jonathan, if we are to only consider the four static levels, then i can see
your arguement. but when Dynamic Quality is taken into consideration, then
Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality cannot be changed in the way you suggest,
otherwise it would just degenerate into 'something' that was no longer the
MOQ.
as for what has been labeled 'mental masturbation', i suppose we all have
reasons for being here. i find a level of conversation here that is
difficult to find in my everyday life. but i also know that everything that
i write is basically meaningless graspings after that which cannot be named.
but still i choose to act as if it really matters that i get this sentence
just right and that word in the proper place. the only other choice is to
act as if it doesnt matter, which is folly, and leads to a degeneracy in
spirit and a fatalistic outlook on life in general.
Horse wrote:
There seems
to be an assumption that there is only one angle to DQ, which I think is
incorrect.
I know this isn't going to make me Mr Popular but I would suggest that an
initial
division would be into Contributive and Formative DQ. The former is the
recognition of the new whilst the latter is responsible for its creation.?"
and in reply Walter wrote:
With the risk of understanding Horses division wrong, I think that
Contributive SQ is what we talk about from the human-perspective, and
Formative DQ is what we talk about in the more over-all perspective.
Mayby the topic of this month 'What is DQ'? is to broad, because of the many
different subjects and contents of the postings.
Horse and Walter, i think it would be great if we could do as you both
suggest and divide Dynamic Quality into parts which may shed some light on
what DQ really is. however i am unsure how to divide something which we
cannot conceive of in the first place. as far as i can see, the notion of
Formative and Contributive DQ is only an attempt at labeling the cutting
edge of awareness. we have to remember that Dynamic Quality cannot be
defined by what it is, the best we can do is say what it is not.
best wishes to all
glove
http://members.tripod.com/~Glove_r/Bohr.html
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