From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jan 25 2003 - 21:30:46 GMT
Wim, Steve, Platt and y'all:
Wim said:
I think Pirsig isn't making things clearer by talking about
'biological/social/intellectual entities. It would be better, I think, to
stress that thinking in terms of patterns of value is to be distinguished as
clearly as possible from thinking in terms of subjects and objects. Equating
objects with inorganic and biological patterns of value and subjects with
social and intellectual patterns of value (which Pirsig did explicitly in
his SODV-paper; see on www.moq.org) is only excusable as a crude rule of
thumb or short introduction to SOM for SO-thinkers. It's a fallacy, I
believe, to try to categorize 'things' (usually visualized as subject or
object) as a pattern of value of one of the levels.
DMB says:
A crude rule of thumb? A fallacy to try to categorize things? Hmmm. I think
you're making this much more complicated and cumbersome than it needs to be.
Pirsig includes this "crude rule of thumb" a couple of pages into chapter 24
of Lila.
Pirsig:
"The MOQ resolves the relationship between intellect and society, subject
and object, mind and matter, by embedding all of them in a larger system of
understanding. Objects are inorganic and biological values; subjects are
social and intellectual values. They are not two mysterious universes that
go floating around in some subject-object dream that allows them no real
contact with one another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary
relationship. That evolutionary relationship is also a moral one."
DMB continues:
I think this is quite simple and clear. We see here that subjects and
objects are not abandoned or thrown out, but are embedded into a larger
picture. Objects lose their metaphysical bedrock status in this enlarged
vision, but they certainly don't disappear from the scene. I mean, the
purpose of the four levels is all about categorizing "things" and
"entities". Its about making sense of the world we all know and experience
everyday.
Steve: I wish I could say that it were obvious for me, but I have
difficulty. I can see how rocks, plants, animals, people, and ideas fall
neatly into the categories but what about crime, democracy, terrorism,
communism, capitalism, dancing monkeys and others that have been debated by
this group that seem much less obvious to me.
DMB says:
Some things are certainly more difficult to pin down than others. No doubt
about that. And here's a thought that may have already occured to you; one
must have a grasp of the thing in question before one can even begin to
categorize it. I think lots of disagreements emerge from this more basic
kind of misunderstanding. Platt, for example, has a prejudice against the
intellectual level ideologies and therefore doesn't understand what
socialism and communism really are. This is why he consistently blunders on
questions about them. For example...
Platt said:
Call me simplistic. Crime-biological. Democracy-social. Terrorism-
biological. Communism-social. Capitalism-social. Dancing monkeys-
biological. (I'd like to see some corroboration for that monkey story.)
DMB says:
I can't even count the number of times I've posted and refered to Pirsig's
explicit statements about clash between social and intellectual level
ideologies, but Platt repeated comes up with this mistaken formulation. As
you can see, he puts Democracy, Communism and Capitalism all on the social
level, but here's what the author says in Chapter 22...
Pirsig:
Communism and Socialism, programs for the intellectual control of society,
were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the
social control of intellect. ... The gigantic power of socialism and
fascism, which have overwhelmed this centyry, is expaoined by a conflict of
levels of evolution. This conflict explains the driving force behind
Hitler...as an all-consuming gorification of social authority and hatred of
intellectualism."
"Now it should be stated at this point that the MOQ SUPPORTS this dominance
of intellect over society. It says intellect is a higher level of evolution
than soicety, therefore it is a more moral level than society." (author's
emphasis)
We can see that fascism is a throwback to the old days for lots of reasons,
but one example that I find infinately telling in Spain's Franco. On his way
out, in 1976 I think, he tried to restore the Monarchy. Kings and fascist
dictators have more in common than not.
All this is consistent with the quotes about capitalism and socialism that
were posted recently in the "Pirsig a Liberal?" thread....
"That's what neither the socialist NOR the capitalists ever got figured out.
From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism. Its a
higher form of evolution. Its an intellectually guided society, not just a
society that is guided by mindless traditons. That's what gives socialism
its drive. But what the socialist left out and what has all but killed their
whole undertaking is an absence of a concept of indefinite DQ. You go to a
socialist city and it's always a dull place because there's little DQ. On
the other hand the conservatives who keep trumpeting about the virtues of
free enterprise are normally just supporting their own self-interest. They
are just doing the usual cover-up fro the rich in their age-old explotation
of the poor. Some of them seem to sense there is also something mysteriously
virtuous in a free enterprise system and you can see them stuggling to put
it into words but they don't have the metaphysical vocabulary for it any
more than the socialists do."
Just one more thing. I'd like to get to the point where lots of us can see
the levels clearly enough that we could use them to talk about current
events. I think this is the beauty and power of the MOQ. It expalins what in
the world is going on. But it seems like the politically conservative
members just can't face the facts as it puts their beliefs and attitudes at
a lower level. Any attempt to clarify these kinds of issues usually results
in anger, denial, hostility and other kinds of monkey wrenches. It kills me.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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