From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Jul 20 2004 - 23:22:15 BST
Hi Paul,
Perhaps you're right, but I take my notion that the intellectual level
might better be called the individual level from Pirsig's discussion of
insanity in Lila, Chapters 25, 26 and 30. Clearly there's a battle going
on
between the ideas of an insane individual vs. his culture.
"When an insane person-or a hypnotized person or a person from a primitive
culture advances some explanation of the universe that is completely at
odds with current scientific reality, we do not have to believe he has
jumped off the end of the empirical world. He is just a person
(individual)
who is valuing intellectual patterns that, because they are outside the
range of our own culture (society), we perceive to have very low quality.
Some biological or social or Dynamic force has altered his judgment of
quality. It has caused him (individual) to filter out what we (society)
call normal cultural intellectual patterns just as ruthlessly as our
culture filters out his (individual). "That's what mental hospitals are
partly for. And also heresy trials. They protect the culture (society)
from
foreign ideas (individual) that if allowed to grow unchecked could destroy
the culture itself." (Lila, 26)
I've added "individual" and the "society" in parens to indicate where I
see
the individual/society conflict.
In Chap. 29, Pirsig further cements this conflict:
"Sometimes the insane and the contrarians and the ones (individuals) who
axe the closest to suicide are the most valuable people society has. They
may be precursors of social change. They've taken the burdens of the
culture onto themselves, and in their struggle to solve their own problems
they're solving problems for the culture as well."
This bolsters Pirsig's view that societies only change one person at a
time
and someone has to be first.
Your presumption of success being socially determined and material in
nature seems to go against the thrust of the MOQ where individual success
might best be thought of as adopting a new interpretation of reality as
described in Pirsig's works.
Best,
Platt
> Hi Platt
>
> Platt said:
> Perhaps our debate is a reflection of this "fight," with you championing
> the social patterns in the name of the public good and I holding out for
> the freedom of the individual to succeed or fail on his own...
>
> Paul:
> Intellectual freedom is simply the freedom to hold and voice ideas. At
> that level, an intellectual pattern succeeds or fails in terms of its
> clarity and precision as a description, explanation or prediction of
> experience.
>
> Also, I think the personal or individual success (or failure) that you
> "hold out for" also occurs at other levels, so cannot be a defining part
> of the intellectual level. In my experience, the most dominant measure
of
> personal success is wealth - a social level phenomena.
>
> Platt said:
> ....using such intellectual powers as he is able to muster to make
> decisions for himself and enjoy or suffer the consequences, whatever
they
> may be.
>
> Paul:
> But the problem occurs when it is others who suffer the consequences...
>
> Anyway, in my understanding of the MOQ, subordinating intellectual
> patterns to a primarily social level goal of individual success is
> immoral. Pirsig contemplates this in LILA:
>
> "He was really at the top of the world now, he supposed...at the
> opposite end of some kind of incredible social spectrum from where he
had
> been twenty years ago, bouncing through South Chicago in that hard-
sprung
> police truck on the way to the insane asylum.
>
> Was it any better now?
>
> He honestly didn't know. He remembered two things about that crazy ride:
> the first was that cop who grinned at him all the way, meaning, "We're
> going to fix you good, boy" - as if the cop really enjoyed it. The
second
> was the crazy understanding that he was in two worlds at the same time,
> and in one world [Paul: social] he was at the rock bottom of the whole
> human heap and in the other world [Paul: intellectual] he was at the
> absolute top. How could you make any sense out of that? What could you
> do? The cop didn't matter, but what about this last?
>
> Now here it was all upside down again. Now he was at some kind of top of
> that first world, but where was he in the second? At the bottom? He
> couldn't say. He had the feeling that if he sold the film rights big
> things were going to happen in the first world, but he was going to take
> a long slide to somewhere in the second." [LILA Ch.20]
>
> (Of course, this doesn't mean that material success will never follow
> high quality intellectual patterns, Robert Pirsig actually being a good
> example of where this has happened.)
>
> I think your equation of "the individual" with the intellectual level
> completely changes the MOQ's ontological framework, and consequently its
> moral framework. What I'm unclear about, based on recent posts, is
> whether you make the equation because you believe it provides a better
> explanation of experience or because it supports your political beliefs.
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul
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