From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Thu Dec 11 2003 - 15:42:03 GMT
Hi Matt,
> Steve said:
> I don't understand how a eudaimonic pattern of experience compares to an
> intellectual one in this formulation.
>
> Matt:
> In my forumulation of the two? Well, I haven't glossed it all out yet, but I
> think you can think of the break between the intellectual level and the
> eudaimonic level as the split between public and private spheres. Before the
> idea of privacy, everyone was susceptible to control by the public sphere.
> This goes along with language being at first a social thing. You talked to
> other people, you agree on the meanings of words, etc. With the creation of
> privacy, you start to talk to yourself.
>
> I think I see the split like this:
>
> intellectual v. eudaimonic
> public v. private
> language-as-convergence v. language-as-divergence
>
> So, in a sense, I think you could make this split:
>
> politics, science v. art, religion
>
> Politics aims at consensus because politics is all about getting people to
> agree on policy to get stuff done. Science definitely aims at consensus.
> However, art and literature, it seems like the more different you are, the
> more idiosyncratic, the more appreciated you are. We don't like movies that
> fit a forumula, we like groudbreaking stuff.
>
> With religion, I'm thinking of Whitehead's definition: religion is what we do
> with our aloneness.
Steve says:
I think that your public/private is an interesting analytical cut but I
don't think it can square with the MOQ levels. I thought of this section of
Lila...
"Descartes' "I think therefore I am" was a historically shattering
declaration of independence of the intellectual level of evolution the the
social level of evolution, but would he have said it if he had been a 17th
century Chinese philosopher? If he had been, would any in seventeenth
century China have listened to him and called a brilliant thinker and
recorded his name in history? If Descartes had said, "the 17th century
French culture exists, therefore I think, therefore I am", he would have
been correct.
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. ... "
To me this suggests that the way Pirsig defines the first four levels, any
fifth level would be embedded in a system that can't escape the lower four
levels. In other words, there is no possibility for the sort of privacy
that defines your (Sam's) idea for a fifth level. Just as Descartes'
intellectual patterns rely on his 17th century French social patterns,
Eudaimonic patterns (if any) must rely on intellectual patterns (as social
patterns can't exist without biological ones and so on). The only aloneness
that is consistent with Pirsig's MOQ is what Buddhists might call Emptiness.
Not a new set of static patterns but the complete absence of static
patterns.
When you say...
> So, what is a eudaimonic pattern of experience? Its what you experience when
> you are alone. It is intensely private. It is essentially mystical.
I can nearly agree. The sort of aloneness required would be mystical, but
then it isn't *patterned* experience so it can't be a fifth *static* level.
What do you think?
Steve
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