From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jan 26 2003 - 19:17:21 GMT
Steve, Wim and y'all:
> 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 added:
> 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 replied:
Pirsig doesn't help us make sense of the world by merely subdividing
subjects and objects into two new categories for each. Pirsig spends a
great deal of time criticizing subject-object categorizations which won't
improve by adding subdivisions. Pirsig is asking us to make sense of the
world in a new way. What we perceive as individual entities and things and
subject and objects that seem to "have no real contact with one another" are
all participants in broader patterns. It is the patterns that can be
classified into the static levels, not the entities that participate in
uncountable patterns of up to four different types.
DMB says:
Hmmm. I think that by embedding subjects and objects into this larger
system, Pirsig accomplishes two important things. The first one is to rob
objectivity of its supreme status. That is to say he makes subjective
realities just as real as rocks and trees. The second one is to make a
distinction between two seperate kinds of subjectivity. SOM does not
recognize the social level as a distinctly different sort of thing. The
mind/body problem, for example, is a result of this lack of recognition.
Pirsig's larger vision makes this and other problems disappear. In his
bigger picture the social level is the connecting link between mind and
body, between the intellectual and the biological. This is how he addresses
the flaw in the intellect, the flaw that led so many thinkers to confuse
criminals and saints. They didn't see that social values had for many
thousands of years kept biological values under wraps. He's doing more than
just re-naming subjects and objects as static patterns, he's a entire level
of reality that SOM could not see. See?
This is why it seems very easy to understand the first two levels. SOM
already saw that clearly enough. It is when we come to the distinction
between social and intellectual values that people tend to get mixed up.
This is the novel part of Pirsig's view.
By the way, the reason I posted the "monkey dance" is because it seems to me
that we can see the very beginnings of the social level there. We can see
the social level beginning to emerge out of the biological there. I think
its very, very interesting that the central axis around which they danced
persists at the social level to this very day. The central axis appears in
different forms all over the world in the great religions. We are reminded,
as I said before, of the tree of life in the center of the garden of Eden.
We see it in the cross of Christ, the tree where Odin was hung, the Bodhi
tree where the Buddha attained enlightenment, in the Islamic pilgrage to
Mecca and the circular motion of the those believers. And just the other day
I saw a documentary about an archeological find known as "the Siberian ice
maiden" who was found buried wearing a tall hat that symbolized the "tree of
life", as the scientist put it. We're talking about a very real thing here.
The social level is what makes us human. Without it we're just clever apes.
And yet this is the baby that was thrown out with the bathwater as the
intellect declared its' independence. Pirsig says this is a huge mistake and
it would be impossbile to think at all without the social level. To SOMers,
this is nothing but a meaningless, subjective, epiphenomenon. See?
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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