Hi David and all,
David Buchanan wrote:
>
> Denis David and Y'all:
>
> THE SOCIAL LEVEL IS FULL OF USEFUL INFORMATION.
> Its a very curious exercise to examine conversations about sports,
> weather and small injuries for their intellectual content. Looking at
> language is bound to be fruitful because it's common to both the social
> and intellectual levels. You seem to suggest that conversation is
> intellectual to the extent that information is exchanged, but I'd simply
> point out that lots of information is exchanged on the social level too,
> its just a different kind, with a different purpose. Recall Pirsigs
> description of pre-historical societies? Everything was ritual. Learning
> to get food, clothing and shelter was done by ritual. They manufactured
> weapons, built houses, no doubt they had different kinds of outfits for
> the various members of the society. They had "technology" in that sense,
> but it was trasmitted by ritual, by demonstration and without
> blueprints. The exchange of information is not exclusively intellectual.
> That's another thing the two top levels have in common, they both convey
> meaning.
>
I disagree, on the social level information isn't transmitted, just
behaviours. To abstract you need Intellect. Otherwise it's just
stimuli-responses interactions.
As I said in the post concerning Koko, this "information" isn't
transmitted in an Intellectual format (not transmitted with symbols),
and therefore is not of the same scale.
OTOH, any information about a football match can ONLY be transmitted in
an Intellectual format. With words. And you still haven't answered my
critic why an obviously intellectual thing like mathematics could exist
without Intellect. Are you going to tell me that mathematics are a
social thing ?
The primitive men of the Neolithic age were already in the Intellectual
level. Still in its infancy, but it started there, when the first
mythologies were created to give meaning to a world that needed a new
kind of coherence, a new value, a new Quality. The rituals you speak
about were the social frame of this Intellectual activity. Today
university courses are the descendents of the rituals of Cro-Magnon men.
> WHY ARE INTELLECTUALS SO DAMN RUDE?
> You ought to be nice to your baker. Make small talk if it puts some one
> at ease. If we are going to live together we've got to get along. This
> is good, but its not intellectual. I dare say intellectual integrity can
> suffer in our attempts to get along. Pirsig rails against his fraternity
> brothers who would sell their brains to corporations. It represents the
> degeneracy of dragging a one level's values down into lowers ones.
> Remember Pirsig wouldn't sell ZAMM to Redford? He reasoned that his book
> is intellectual, but movies are a social medium, so selling the rights
> would be immoral and degernerate. If corporate chemists and Robert
> Redford movies are social, then talking football is very far from
> intellectual. See it doesn't have much to do with the topic of the
> conversation, the level of education or intelligence of those doing the
> talking. The difference between social and intellectual levels is the
> distinctly seperate values they represent.
>
All this talk about dragging oneself down into the social level is just
an excuse to ignore the social level, and thus not say anything
meaningful about it. If a good analysis of it can help people to
recognize the importance of the social level, and therefore help them
live fuller lives, then the MOQ will have proven its worth : "Any
metaphysics which doesn't help you in real life isn't worth a damn",
remember ? I'm not saying we should sell our asses to Big Brother to get
a comfortable niche in society, but that we should understand how things
work at the social level if we want to stop being nerds and get some
girls (and boys for you ladies) ! ;^)
The reason why nobody sees anything wrong in selling their brains to
corporations is because nobody understands that this isn't the purpose
of the Intellect. The reason why they don't understand this is because
they have no idea what the social level is.
The problem Pirsig had with the corporate chemists wasn't that they
weren't doing anything intellectual, it was the opposite : they were
doing something intellectual, but for the gain of the social level. It's
the same with R. Redford movie : he was going to put an Idea on the
market with the intent to make big bucks, not with the intent to educate
people. It was a debasement of the Intellectual side.
I'm sure documentaries are fine mediums for the Intellectual level in
RMP's view. They are made with the intent to educate people. Chomsky's
"Manufacturing Consent" (which I really have to see) is probably a fine
piece of Intellectual activity, even though it shows images and not
text, and even though it is a critic of the social institution of
democracy. It's the "entertainment", bick buck making part Pirsig
objects to, not the medium itself. Films (in the large sense) like
Language can be used for social or intellectual purposes. In the social
case we call them movies, in the intellectual one documentaries :
though, the only difference between them is in the intent.
[Marco proposed the idea that Art was a high form of Language, and this
seems to support his Idea. Perhaps we could discuss this next month. I
was actually hoping he would propose this as topic for this month, but
well...]
The different value is in what it represents for the creators of the
film/chemical formula/whatever : an actual increase if the intellect or
an increase of their ego and bank account ?
Therefore, talking football, if you are really interested in it, is an
intellectual activity. It increases the listener's knowledge about
football. You might deem this completely uninteresting and trivial (I
do), but why say it isn't Intellectual ? I've seen people similarly
object to teaching religious stories at school, saying it was rubbish
that shouldn't enter the academic field.
Should I therefore consider 'The Masks of God' a social thing ?
> CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE!
> On one side is biology. Its supposed to be controlled by society. So we
> have rituals at birth, marriage cermonies, funerals at the end of life,
> prayers and rituals at mealtime and even in the kitchen, and lots of
> other forms surrounding our biological functions. There are rites and
> rituals most occupations too. Pirsig points out that this kind of
> organization actually has a liberating effect, freeing the organism from
> the pressures of survival alone in the wild. Pirsig says the
> Enlightenment notion that "Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in
> chains" simply isn't true. SOM goes along with this mistaken notion,
> believeing that societies are created by the mind of man, instead of the
> other way around. SOM does not recognize the vaildity of the social
> level and its power to restrain brute biological forces. The problem
> with SOM is that it has caught society in a crossfire. Pirsig says this
> is why we've seen such an increase in vice crime, hedonism, consumerism,
> etc.
>
On one side is biology. Its supposed to be controlled by society. So we
have other people's help at birth, adultery and incest taboos, taboos
against killing, incentive to share at mealtime, and lots of other forms
surrounding our biological functions, like taboos regarding when and
where to have sex, to relieve oneself etc. There are rites and rituals
for most of these occupations too, but they are the symptoms of the
Intellect trying to give meaning to these occupations. It assigns good
and bad values to everything, stories about the reasons why, and laws to
regulate the whole. This is why human social systems are much more
complex and diverse than those of any other species, just as social
animals nervous systems are more complex than those of simple organisms
(if they have one at all).
Society isn't created by Intellect, but it is sure influenced by it.
Tell me science hasn't influenced in a most profound way western
society, for example. Everything changed, just has the amotsphere of
Earth started changing when plants started releasing tons of oxygen into
the air.
The emergence of a new level changes things on the macroscopic scale for
the lower level. Atoms didn't start acting differently when life
emerged, but new molecules appeared, in greater quantities than before,
and chemistry became a much more complex thing. When society emerged,
DNA stayed the same but the organisms started organizing themselves
differently, both internally and externally. And when Intellect emerged,
the behaviours stayed the same (hunt for food, search for a mate,
raising of children) but became more complex and diverse.
The problem today is that we went from a stifling mythos saying the
social level was paramount to a decaying one where the social level is a
useless relic of the past. The MOQ puts it back into its right place :
between Biology and Intellect. Superior to the first one, subservient to
the other.
> WHAT IS THAT AWFUL SMELL?
> Nihilism, cynicism and apathy are cheap these days. Existentail angst is
> going for about three cents per ton. SOM is ignorant of the social
> level's value, dismissing it as prejudice, superstition and wishful
> thinking. That's SOM's biggest mistake because it not only put society
> in a deadly and inescapable crossfire, it has caused "the death of God".
> Marx is the most obvious example. He was an intellectual who saw
> religion as nothing more than an opiate for the masses. Nietszche's
> "Geneology of Morals" paints a similar picture. Think about the enormity
> of it. All Western cultures believed in the gods or a God and it was the
> central organizing priciple and the center of life streaching back tens
> of thousands of years, and then in one brief historical moment it was
> all shattered. No more creator. No more protector. No more pupose of
> meaning. Nothing matters. The terrible secret loneliness of the
> twentieth century is the smell of god's rotting corpse.
>
Perhaps, but I think it's too late to revive the old bastard. And
anyway, I don't miss him that much. I still smell the stench of burning
pyres and human flesh on his dying breath. Let him die, and help with
the delivery of a new God not so fundamentaly separated from its
children, not so fundamentaly tied to the preservation of the social
level, and not so scornful of its Intellectual child.
Help us to give birth to Quality. "The King is dead. Long live the King
!" as the French used to say (before we beheaded the whole family).
Nihilism doesn't have its place when you experience everyday the
presence of God, cynicism is hard to come by when you understand that
every part of the Universe is sacred, and apathy is really a waste when
you could be looking for higher states. The MOQ has all this contained
within, I hope everyone understands this.
> PREACHERS IN THE PHYSICS LAB?
> Absolutely not. Pirsig's paper (SODV) explains what he means by social
> level mediation in the scientific method by pointing to Bohr's
> Domplimentarity. That's where the "suspended in language" quote comes
> from. To simplify it a bit, all four levels are involved; The equipment
> and the observers constitute the first two levels, just as in any other
> experiment. But the data is then expressed not only with mathematical
> equations (intellectual), but also with verbal descriptions. By
> re-introducing language as an essential part of the scientific method,
> the social level is involved once again. And I'm sure this is just the
> beginning. Maybe social level mediation could also include ask questions
> about the social and moral implications of our science and technology.
> Maybe we need that level simply to ask if we should rather than just if
> we can do something. Maybe the social level would prevent certain
> technologies from ever leaving the research phase. Maybe it would even
> give our machines and bulidings a better aesthetic quality.
>
So that's what you meant by "social level mediation" !? Using Language
in the lab ? Let me tell you : I'm not impressed. (sorry)
What do you think they use ? Telepathy ?
The moral part is more to my taste, and I think in this you're right. If
GOOD is to be at the apex of our lives, then the good of a discovery or
technology should be thought about. The ethical, social and biological
(ecological) aspect of an intellectual breakthrough should be something
the Scientists should be concerned with. At the moment it is more : "Let
us leave that to the philosophers, ethical commissions and governments.
We've got new discoveries to make, funding to find, and Nobel prizes to
win."
Shit. 1 a.m. already... Going to bed.
Be good
Denis
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