Bob Wallace writes:
>One of the things I find most useful about Pirsig's four levels is that
>I can plug concepts into them and find out what they do.
> Although it's not obvious in my posts, my main interests are economics,
>political science, law, and history.
> Where does government fall in these four levels?
> One thing government cannot exist without is force--the threat of
>physical force or violence. That is the nature of government.
> This almost sounds like government falls in the biological level. What
>I think government is, actually, is the interface between society and
>biology. It 'holds down' biology and serves as a base for society.
> If this is true, then government is absolutely inferior to society. And
>if government expands, it can only expand by destroying society.
> I think this explains why societies like Nazi Germany, Communist
>Russia, etc. were all barbarous. Government expanded, destroyed society,
>and let biology reign supreme.
> And what does this say about people who say, "The government should do
>something," or "There ought to be a law"? The kind who think government
>can solve most if not all problems? Are they advancing society or
>destroying it?
> I can't find any flaws in this. Can anyone else?
Glove:
I am troubled tonight as I seem to have misplaced my highlighted copy of
Lila somewhere... but I seem to remember that Pirsig clearly states that
government is within the social level and therefore it cannot be inferior to
itself. I believe we touched upon this same idea a couple months ago in
another discussion. Rather than destroying society, the "barbarous"
governments seek to strengthen it by eliminating the intellectuals in one
fashion or another. Ultimately though, a stasis is created and those
societies are doomed to fail as they contain the seeds of their own
destruction by not allowing the free flow of ideas to emerge and sweep away
the stagnated social patterns.
Therefore, I would say that the real struggle is between the social and
intellect level, rather than the biological-social level. The social level
has already won the battle with the biological level by being able to create
governments in the first place. In a high Quality government, the social
level recognizes the need for Dynamically free flowing ideas rather than
fearing them and allows the intellect level the freedom to make changes for
the good. However, there is still the need for society to dominate the
biological level, and this is where the threat of physical force or violence
comes into play. It would seem that when that social power becomes too
great, that same force is used against the intellect level as well because
that is how society controls the biological level.
The threat of force or physical violence you mention may be tied in with the
social celebrity force that Pirsig talks about. That would probably make a
very interesting paper...
Best wishes,
glove
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