From: storeyd (storeyd@bc.edu)
Date: Mon May 03 2004 - 04:30:41 BST
DM, DMB, and all:
>
>dmb says:
>Right. I had the second quote specifically in mind when using the word
>"dominated" too. But Dave's warning that the word implies a kind of
>distortion or malfunctioning can be seen in these quotes. I mean, it seems
>pretty clear to me that Pirsig isn't saying its such a great thing to be a
>"socially pattern-dominated" person. And it safe to say that he includes
>Hitler and those hopelessly static Victorians among the socially dominated.
Correct: the Victorians--and especially Hitler--are examples of,
respectively, ossified and pathological forms of social static quality. or
better, they are good examples of evolutionary hangovers, either rusty
customs, quite literally, out of touch with the current evolution of
consciousness at the time (the Victorians, already riding a wave of DQ into
liberal individualist rationality, which cannot be contained by the SQ of
mythic religion and the formal mores that accompany it) or retrogressive SQ
programs trying to halt and reverse the evolutionary clock (Fascism, and with
devastating results, because DQ stops for no one, it stops you (which is
precisely why Qaulity has Lila, and not the reverse)). The point is not that
the social level is good or bad, but that it has good and bad interpretations,
enactments, performancances, etc. note too that the intellectual level itself
is niether good nor bad, but has its own set of illnesses, as Pirsig
consistently points out. HOWEVER: a healthy intellectual pattern is more
moral, of higher quality, than a social pattern, even though a sick IP is
lower quality than a healthy SP (this is impresise, but you get the idea).
As DMB said, we can use whatever terms we want, be they dominated,
prominent, or probablistic, but they point is the same: if by dominated we
mean a static pattern that suppresses dynamic improvement and adaptation (such
as a Fascist govt), then that's bad. likwise, if we mean a person dominated
by social-level-patterns, incapable of changing his beliefs when presented
with a logical, irrefutable argument, then that's a person who is DOMINATED by
a set of social patterns, EVEN THOUGHT THAT PERSON IS ALWAYS MORE THAN THE
PATTERNS BY WHICH HE BEHAVES, MOVES, IS IN THE WORLD. Remember, when we talk
about organic, social, or intellectual levels, we are talking about
hierarchically related modes of being in the world, and each person will adapt
uniquely, though the form of his interpretation of Quality will usually be
largely determined by his social context.
This brings me to some interesting things DMB said, regarding centers of
gravity, or bell curves, of individuals and cultures. It's such an important
idea for understanding evolutinary contexts, the relations within and between
different levels, etc., and once you get used to the ideas (once they becomes
static patterns of your intellectual awareness), it's really like a form of
radar you develop for interpreting people, conversations, history, well, all
of it! more importantly, you start to interpret your own self, your habits,
past, your reactions, etc. in short, it's really about a deeper
self-consciousness, and you start to see how all the different levels that
make you up exert pulls on you, which are, yes, more dominant, more prominent.
i mean, this is waht we call characteristics, right? but now we're putting
those in a develompental, evolutionarily psychological context, and once we do
that, we start to see that development doesn't stop around age 21, but that
it's really just beginning.
But I was wondering: Dmb said a few emails ago that "cultures and
societies are complex creatures", or something like that. Is the suggestion
that cities, villages, abstract cultures, etc. have a sentient intelligence, a
type of hive mind that orients their action? To a large extent, i think there
is some validity to this idea, except that, from an evolutionary standpoint,
we need to clarify: the Big Giant is not alive, it does not intend a field of
consciousness/Quality. This is something I felt was unresolved and ambiguous
in Lila, perhaps someone can help me out. I wasn't sure if Pirsig was saying
that the Big Giant was like a gravitational field of DQ, a hive mind, or
whatever. But when you say that a culture, religion, or society has a center
of gravity, i know exactly what you mean, but i just want to make sure you're
saying that, for any given collective context--at any given LEVEL--the bell
curve, avg. level, etc., is the aggregate of all the individuals that make up
and participate in that context. Because contexts without individuals are
literally nowhere to be found. The very concepts of culture, religion,
society, etc., are totalities, products of rational abstraction formed in
order to order, structure, cognize advanced social life, right? i'm only
splitting hairs because I think the idea is a very subtle but crucial point,
and it should breed a lot of discussion. But i think my claims square with
Pirsig--as he says very clearly, he's interested in Lila because he thinks
that the best way to think about the universe is not through sociology, or
mathematics, or anthropoloyg, but BIOGRAPHY. right?
-Dave
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon May 03 2004 - 04:45:12 BST