From: Allen Barrows (allen_barrows@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Wed Jun 15 2005 - 16:52:43 BST
Hi Allen
Seriously Allen, some of us have been at this discussion for ages
and been through every possible and impossible angle to the
MOQ, then to start again with newcomers from rock bottom is too
much. I'm sorry if this sounds off-putting, but I feel that you are a
bit in league with one Squonkstail whose holy grail was intellect
and his mission to defend it against my effort to take it down to its
proper place. The MOQ mends things by by wrestling the
metaphysical "M" from SOM leaving its S/O the intellectual value
level of its own system
Allen - Hello Bo, I appreaciate you have been in discussion for ages but that is not an
intellectual argument it is an apeal to authority which is a social
pattern i think.
It is argument which is important and not alliances and name calling.
To tell anyone that you have been at something for ages and yet can not be bothered to
begin from scratch does yourself a great injustice because if you have
rehearsed your position for as long as you claim then you should be in the best way to
have developed the skill with which to convey it simply and concisely to
others.
To say you can not be bothered is to say you do not value it. What more can be more off
putting than to tell some one you can not be bothered yourself.
Putting that to one side i consider your intellectual position and once more i stress that i
have read all your material so there is not even any need for you
to start from scratch in any case. This makes things even worse because now you
simply repeat yourself over and over again in the vain hope that someone is just
going to blindly say ok i agree with you. That happens when free thought is deliberately
suppressed and freedom for expression is dampened.
I am not on a mission to do anything more than explore the ideas of thinkers i appreciate
and enjoy. I do not enjoy your ideas and find them to make sense in an
old fashioned and retrograde way similar to Berkeley idealism. So call me stupid and
call me an idiot but i look to other comments and the same reaction is met.
Now allot of people are stupid and idiot and swine by your own language and this
includes Robert Pirsig too.
I want an argument not foul mouth. I want more than being told about special ideas and
special outlooks and legacys. Tell me what you think and enjoy doing it
because i am here to listen but you have to listen too. Blind statements are not cutting
the mustard.
Bo: The resistanse to the SOL is SOM's firm grip and this rests with
with the inner dialogue we all keep going with ourselves or with
imaginary opponents.
Allen - I see. This is neat because anyone at all who resists is fundamentally wrong.
This negates any need on your part to argue intelligently because you have
convinced yourself that you are the only one who is right. This includes newcomers and
anyone who has been through it all for as long as your self. With your
ideas under their belt, anyone with force at their disposal has a moral right to enforce
this opinion upon everyone else East, West, North and South.
This makes us believe that there is an
inner forum where all this takes place. In SOM this forum is
called MIND and the dialogue is called THOUGHTS . If one
transfers this directly to the MOQ the said forum becomes
INTELLECT and the dialogue becomes intellectual PATTERNS.
But it can't be transferred directly: Intellect is not any subjective
inner arena, SOM's inner/outer AS A METAPHYSICS is rejected!
In the ancient pre-intellectual - social level - era the inner voices
were perceived as gods, their forebears or demons talking to
them, without the ancients seeing it as taking place in their
minds, THERE WAS NO MIND/MATTER BEFORE INTELLECT.
(not shouting, just trying to imitate "italics")
Allen - Now you are telling me what is to be read in your website. I have read all this
before.
That is fine except for one bad problem and that is you are talking at me rather than
asnwering my points i made before today. That is simply not acceptable. As
i have indicated to you Mind is a Cartesian symbolic manipulation without any regard for
social patterns from which it developed. Therefore Cartesian mind is
wrong because there is a social element invloved in this term. I want i direct answer to
my points from now on or this conversation is off. Begin with what i
have said before today and then move on to this from Anthony McWatts book page 99.
In Pirsigian terms, the social and intellectual levels were distinct before the
Renaissance but the intellectual level was not yet independent. Descartes represents
the break with the church, the break from theology, the break from the social level.
Cartesian doubt, then, represents the independence of the intellect and the beginning
of modernity. However, Pirsig laments the way SOM philosophy then ‘threw the
baby out with the bathwater’ with the mistaken perception that intellect was ‘born
without parents’. He therefore corrects Descartes and instead insists that the latter
can only think he exists as an individual because French culture exists. Pirsig
illustrates the intellectual level’s development from society in the following:
Descartes’ ‘I think therefore I am’ was a historically shattering declaration
of independence of the intellectual level of evolution from the social level of
evolution, but would he have said it if he had been a seventeenth century
Chinese philosopher? If he had been, would anyone in seventeenth century
China have listened to him and called him a brilliant thinker and recorded his
name in history? If Descartes had said, ‘The seventeenth century French
culture exists, therefore I think, therefore I am,’ he would have been correct.
(Pirsig,1991, p.305)
The point of this illustration is to argue that it was Descartes western cultural
conditioning that produced his lack of doubt in the ego. Whereas if he had been a
Chinese philosopher (where the primacy of the ego has been doubted continuously
for, at least, two thousand years) it would have been unlikely that such an idea would
have seemed reasonable. Pirsig is not saying that all ideas have their genesis in
society but only that it has a large influence on the ideas that an individual will hold.
Allen - the intellectual level was distinct before the Rennaisance and before Mind was
used. Distinct Bo. Intellectual patterns have a distinct evolutionary
presence for a long time before anyone suggested thoughts and dialogues where in the
Mind and a Mind you mistakenly call the intellect. This basis is a large
pillar of your SOL mistake and it can not be argued for effectively by yourself so you just
rant and rave and when people tell you its not good you tell them
you can not be bothered going through it all. Well i have been through it all and nothing
changes until you get yourself sorted out and start bothering a hell
of a lot more.
At the biological level there is no language and no dialogue, but
surely a capacity (among the mammal species at least) for
imagingination, a dog twitching in sleep has a dream experience
of chasing a cat ;-) Finally. As said intellect's S/O is the higest
value and there is no need to (not possible either) drop its
vocaulary of "in my mind" and "thinking" or anything, if only the
MOQ context is - um - kept in mind.
Yours most friendly, but admonishing
Bo
Allen - If you believe that S/O is the highest value then you are an idealist who argues
for a Mind of God who can see and hear everything from his special
outlook and which includes Human Mind with special ideas. You will be very popular in
contemporary American society and a champion of individual values where
'Me' is held to be the most important concept. Terrifying indeed to all free thinking
people across the globe.
Well done Bo i congratulate you and your legacy.
Thank you,
Allen.
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