Hi squad, Denis and David B.,
I sat on this for a few days before completing it, so the posts quoted are
already several days old...
David B.
> > ...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. . .
Denis P.
> 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. . . .
IMHO it's much more serious than that. If you look back over the A-bomb
exchange, I accused David B. of conveniently condemning as "social level"
any opinion he disagreed with. I believe that this stems from a confusion
between:
1. The scale of quality
vs.
2. The hierarchical layering of the levels
Within each level, you can make quality decisions, but you can't
make quality comparisons BETWEEN levels. That contradicts their independent
nature.
It's like saying that my old Sinclair home computer is BETTER than a
brand-new souped up computer workstation, because the old computer
contains an electronic version of my intellectually brilliant treatise,
while the new computer only contains some intellectually bankrupt preloaded
software. One has to specifiy at what basis the comparison is being made.
I previously wrote that one can consider each level as MEDIATING or
resolving conflicts at the lower level. The social vs. intellectual
relationship could be illustrated in the following example:
Monogamy and Polygamy are two conflicting social patterns.
A reasoned comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of each, and a
subsequent conclusion of which was "better" could be considered an
intellectual pattern.
Ironically, some of Pirsig's examples of intellectual patterns fall short of
the mark.
e.g. In democracy, an election isn't determined by a reasoned intellectual
process, but by decisions made on whatever basis the individual chooses
(e.g. charisma, sex-appeal, good-looks, etc.). I think one can come up with
some very good intellectual arguments AGAINST democratic elections.
Let me add, for the record, I personally support democratic elections. My
reasons for doing so may indeed be "intellectual" patterns, but I consider
the elections themselves as a *social* pattern.
Jonathan
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