Greetings,
Pirsig states that the different levels of quality manipulate one another.
He also states that a level can only effect the one directly above or below
it. I gathered this from the following....
chpt 24 Lila -
"The idea that biological crimes can be ended by intellect alone, that
you can talk crime to death doesn't work. Intellectual patterns cannot
directly control biological patterns. Only social patterns can control
biological patterns, "
Now this has got me confused.
Let us say that I need to tie my shoelace up. The idea of the knot required
to tie my laces is surely an intellectual pattern. So I bend down and using
my fingers (biology) tie the laces (non - biological). O.K, so I've gone
down through the levels but where is the social level?
It seems that I've by-passed an entire level of reality and according to my
interpretation of Pirsig this isn't possible. So either I am missing
something or else the theory is not as neat as it is supposed to be. I'm
sure there's an answer to this because my example is hardly an obscure
phenomenon.
This business of communication between the levels is made allot less clear
with the continuation of the above quote....
" & the instrument of conversation between society and biology is not
words. The instrument of conversation between society and biology has always
been a policeman or soldier and his gun."
I don't use a policeman or a soldier to tie my shoelace.
Furthermore, the idea that it is force and not words which manipulate
someone's behaviour seems to contradict everyday experience. I've read books
on personal conduct, understood the words and sometimes decided to alter my
behaviour in their light. In doing so, I didn't need to beat myself over the
head with the book in order to comply. Taking into account that, in such a
case, my actions were, at least, partly a response to social patterns of
value, words were indeed the instrument of conversation between society and
biology.
>From IW
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:05 BST