From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 06:42:46 BST
Platt, DMB, Paul, anyone,
I agree with Platt that Pirsig does not say that the highest Intellectual
patterns do not uplift the individuals who identify with them. They exist,
like social patterns do, above individuals like a novel exists above the
computer's memory. Individuals don't need to explicitly think of a social
or intellectual pattern for that pattern to exist, only for it to be named
or recogninzd as a pattern. The higher level pattern would evolve on its
own by reacting to DQ itself (does Pirsig imply that these patterns do not
evolve on their own? I don't think so.)
This is related (in my mind, at least) to what I was saying about the
hierarchies being opposite for experiencing quality and for the "levels".
It explains why Pirsig said that Lila was Dynamic, which Platt said was a
bugaboo that couldn't be explained. But because she wasn't overly concerned
with upholding or comprehending patterns that existed above her as an
individual, she was keenly and personally aware of dynamic quality, while
Pirsig and Rigel were "sad sacks" in their own ways, their personal
connection to quality being sacrificed to thinkiing about higher level
patterns (intellectual and social respectively). I don't think people
experience the quality of higher levels, though we may root for them to
succeed as fans for some vicarious reason. (And we may believe that life
is much better and higher quality because of something these patterns have
given us, but that is an intellectual appreciation, it isn't immediate
dynamic quality)
I object though Platt to communism being seen as a social pattern, it seems
to me that it is an intellectual pattern. Social patterns I would say were
things like laws and property and things like that - things that are many
thousands of years old. Communism, at least applied to a large country, is
too fresh to be a social pattern, and it opposes too many social patterns
(it values "comrades" more than family members) to see how it could fit in
there. Perhaps the idea of sharing and giving what you can to the tribe is
a social pattern, but trying to apply it to a whole nation is just a
mismatch of levels, trying to close the barn door after the horse has
escaped.
I am also not sure about the relationship of intellectual patterns to the
sovereignity of individuals. Biological patterns are of sovereign
individuals, and social patterns assume the sovereign moral agency of each
person, even as they try to impose themselves on the individuals behavior.
As patterns, of course they just want to propogate themselves, and don't
care about the individuals temporarily embodying them. But intellectual
patterns likewise just want to propogate themselves, and if they find that
they propogate better by severing social bonds and customs and turning
people into individuals working for the pattern, then that's what they will
do.
Johnny
PS, Paul, thanks for your reply earlier. I thought about the seeming
materialism contradiction of the MOQ when I first read Lila also - the
levels seem to imply a materialism of atoms, then molecules, then animals,
all before we get to the humans to have a consciousness to peceive them.
There really is no contradiction, the patterns really exist, and thus it is
equivilent to speak of atoms or to speak of the pattern of atoms. So I
don't think saying that I am seeing the hierarchy from an SOM viewpoint
explains the contradiction, I think the contradictoin is only resolved by
acknowledging that intellectually and socially focused individuals are less
dynamic, not more dynamic. Pirsig says as much, in calling Lila the most
dynamic of the three.
>I thought so. Nothing in the MoQ says that individuals who identify with
>communities uplift themselves to a higher evoluntionary level. In fact,
>identifying with groups any sort--village, nation, global, whatever--is a
>step backward on the evolutionary ladder to social level values. To escape
>from the suffocating bonds of the Giant, collectivism and "social
>construction of reality" was the value force behind the rise of the
>intellectual level and the recognition in the U.S. of the sovereignty of
>the individual. Wilber's "Sensitive Self" with it emphasis on community
>and human bonding (hey comrade) sounds like it was lifted right out of the
>Communist Manifesto.
>
>Platt
>
>
>
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