From: Jonathan B. Marder (jonathan.marder@newmail.net)
Date: Tue Jul 01 2003 - 17:58:58 BST
Hi Folks,
As another veteran reading from the shadows, let me throw in my 2 cents
worth:
The definition of the intellectual level has been the sticking point since
this group started.
The main problem is confusion with the social level, a confusion that RMP
fuelled in Lila by saying that the social and intellectual levels are
equivalent to the "mind" of SOM. This in turn led to people talking in this
forum about "social level" thinking.
The recent posts convince me more than ever that "social level thinking" is
an oxymoron.
To be governed by the social level is to do things "unthinkingly" based on
what society expects.
Thinking is what DEFINES the intellectual level. Pirsig did his best work at
outlining the intellectual level in ZAMM, where he describes its
institutionalized form - THE CHURCH OF REASON.
I would assume that the earliest hominids had considerable powers of
thought, but only in the last few thousand years that thought was honed into
the powerful intellectual tools we know today, such as dialectical argument
and logic. These tools now govern our lives - something we call the "AGE OF
REASON". For this, we owe a lot to the Greek philosophers, who forged a
particular type of thinking (SOM). Pirsig's frustration with the Church of
Reason was that it has restricted thinking so much that perfectly
"reasonable" thoughts are outside its realm. Thus, the SOM-thinking
churchgoers follow their exclusively SOM thoughts to the point of absurdity.
There's nothing reasonable about that!
To summarize, please can we follow the KISS maxim (keep it simple, stupid!):
Intellect is thinking!!
The aim of the MoQ is to expand the use and flexibility of thought.
Jonathan
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