From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 07:43:08 BST
oops, lack of proofreading, sorry. I meant DO uplift the individuals, not
do not. Must be too late and my screen to small to be posting now. Better
wait till work tomorrow :)
>
>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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