Hello everyone
This is in response to Roger's and Mary's comments.
>Glove,
>
>I loved your post about the devil and organization,
Glove: Thank you!
>including the great line:
>
><<
> To me, that is the practical value of Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality. It
> gives us a table on which to lay little shining pieces of truth that we
> happen to find lying about. >>
>
>BTW, I just read a book on Intellect as a social construct called Friday's
>Footprints by L. Brothers. She supports the MOQ's contentions quite
>convincingly. The book is dry and disjointed, but it has several
interesting
>insights including that emotion is a fictional division of a wider spectrum
of
>shared biological response.
Glove:
Thanks for the reading suggestion. I myself am reading "The Magic Mountain"
by Thomas Mann, who was a contempory of Hermann Hesse and who Hesse mentions
in the epilogue of one of his books, I can't remember which one right off
hand. It's an excellent novel though a little slow in starting. Well worth
your time!
Mary:
My key for understanding the intellectual level is to remind myself that
it IS a level and as such is defined by the same parameters defining any
other level. The intellectual level is not defined as having ideas. We
had ideas all the time before the level was born. What sets it apart
from the others is that we finally statically latched into the concept
that it is wrong to deride intellectual VALUES just because they don't
support the social level. The birth of this idea was the birth of the
intellectual level.
Glove:
It's my understanding that each of the four levels are influenced by their
own moral codes and that they are not the same for each level, but rather
seemingly opposed. Rather than saying the intellect level is were ideas
arise, I would say that it is where genuinely new ideas and concepts arise,
as if from nowhere, and these genuinely new ideas always oppose pre-existing
social agreements.
Mary:
Prior to the existence of the intellectual level, we were thinking
people with exactly the same brains we have now. The difference is that
we allowed (not only allowed, but insisted) that our thoughts support
and be of use to the social level.
Glove:
I would argue that there is no way we can ever say what occurred before we
became what we now are. We are trapped, so to speak.
Mary:
The whole reason the intellect
exists is to enhance the stability of the social level.
Glove:
I disagree. The intellect seeks to overthrow the social level.
Mary:
But the
intellect is not the intellectual level.
Glove: For sake of clarity, I prefer to say that the intellect is the
intellect level when discussing the Metaphysics of Quality, unless otherwise
stated.
Mary:
The definition I like is
Bodvar's SOLAQI (Subject Object Logic as Q Intellect). The pattern of
thinking used by the SOM is the intellectual level, and it is actually a
level rather than a social value because it has freed itself from
accepting conclusions that are ONLY good for the social level. The
intellectual level allows us to seek the "truth" without regard to the
social consequences, just as the social level seeks its own most
workable form without regard to its parent the biological level.
Glove: As you may know, I have struggled with Bodvar in the past about this
question and in my own way, I have resolved the question by placing Bodvar's
"Q-intellect" within the social level of the Metaphysics of Quality because
it refers to unambiguous agreements between observers of reality. I will
also admit, however, that I am still unclear as to exactly what Bodvar's
SOLAQI really is and that I could certainly be wrong in my accessment.
Mary:
So, I
agree with you, Glove (see below) up to a point. We differ in that I
believe there is an intellectual level with a set of values unique to
itself, and that those values are a logical search for truth without the
hindrance of social values.
Glove: Since truth is an agreement, it is a social level creation and in no
way a creation of the intellect. Logical searching for truth is a socialized
searching and will not produce anything uniquely new and inspirational. Only
the intellect level can do that.
Best wishes,
Glove
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