DENIS TRIES TO EXPLAIN WHY SOLAQI MIGHT NOT BE SUCH A BAD IDEA AFTER ALL AND WHY HE THINKS THERE IS STILL SOMETHING TO BE TAKEN FROM IT Hi Squad ! I'd like to thank Roger for his great work on this month's discussion and for his support. I think we might reach an general agreement before this month ends. But then, I'd like to add a few things on the SOLAQI subject. First, I remembered that in a private exchange between Bo and I, we HAD agreed on the SOLAQI idea (yes, I'm pretty sure we DID), so why can't we now ? I must misunderstand something... [noises of rummaging into my email software] I've got it !!! > [Bo wrote : ] > > You say (somewhere else): "Inside a level they (there?) are > > scales of evolution." That goes for intellect too. Some people tend to > > equalize it with mental activity or mind of SOM (a dangerous concept > > when transferred into the MOQ) as if someone suddenly > > achieved an ability to think, but I think that's wrong. Cave man did > > speak and possibly formulated complicated theories of origin and > > destiny, but intellect (language) was IN THE SERVICE OF > > SOCIETY, i.e:. the world view was identical to the common myth. I > > can't imagine a latter day atheist or a modern sceptic among them. > > > > What took place in Greece, hundred of thousand years later, was > > the emergence of intellect as a value on its own terms, which started > > to free itself of its social fetters: Its first target the Gods. To > > start pointing to them as myths and fairy tales was to unmask them. > > In the early days they had been taken for granted! > > > > I think this is the way to see intellect's development, else it falls > > victim to your criticism of occidentalism. > > > [ I answered :] > OK, this explanation is something I like better, and I do agree fully > this time. I often had a hunch that, as interpretations of the universe, > religions (or more precisely mythologies) had a proto-metaphysics feel > to them, and nearly put them under the Intellectual level. In fact, if > your replace "language" in the above quote by "mythology", I think we're > near that social/intellect machine code I was talking about. What do you > think ? It sounds a bit like "logos over mythos", doesn't it ? > And I was so near it... Mythology in the service of the social level. Mythology as proto-metaphysics. -> Metaphysics in the service of the social level. If you permit a bit of self-quoting : > The notion that old mythology might have more to do with metaphysics > than we want to admit is one I hold very dear. > But that's for another month. Perhaps not, after all. OK, mythologies are complex static patterns of intellectual value (i.e. they are complex meanings). Therefore, my first intuition was the good one (ALWAYS believe your hunches, guys), mythologies ARE in the Q-Intellect. What's the difference, then ? What *exactly* took place in Plato's and Aristotle's Greece ? Mythologies were metaphysics which served a social FUNCTION (as laws do nowadays). Just as some social behaviour (a mating dance for example) serve a biological function (reproduction), the early Intellect was doing just this : it allowed the social patterns to reproduce themselves from generation to generation. Fear of the gods, of the taboos, teaching techniques to the young (as sacred mysteries), that's what Intellect was all about in those early days. What took place in Greece is that Intellect finally decided it was fed up with being the social level's chore-boy, every evolution it wanted squashed by social conformity. By using dialectic, and proving its worth to its father (if you remember, a lot of the initial goals of philosophy involved creating a philosopher-king, and/or a better model of society), it finally took leave and started its own evolution. It did evolve before, but this time it had the weapons needed (Truth, and its importance to the social level in making laws, and rendering Justice) to fend off most attempts at restraint. Its final victory was still centuries in the future (in the Age of Enlightenment, to be precise, and in the American and French Revolutions), but the first decisive blows fell in this time. I want to return to S/O Logic. Bo hasn't yet answered my call for a precise definition, but I'll hazard my own : S/O Logic implies that assertions (complex patterns of Intellectual value) can be categorized as either true or false. Every meaning is one or the other. Those statements that fit into this mold can be viewed as objective statements and their truth determined by logical reasoning (dialectics, in these days), and those that don't as subjective statements. Subjective statements, since they cannot be proven, must appeal to emotion to force themselves into people's "mind", and must therefore be viewed with suspicion (and so must the tool used to do this "forcing" ; i.e. rhetoric). Nevermind that the unprovable assertion that statements can *only* be true or false was forced into people's mind by just such a trick. Bye-bye Sophists, you filthy catterers to the social conformity. [For a REAL thorough description of this process, I strongly urge you to go back to ZAMM's last 10 pages of chp. 29. Do it. I bookmarked it five times, and at that time, I didn't even knew why ! I felt important, I suppose. Really, do it. Everything will look clearer now in the light of the MOQ.] Now that intellect was free to say what it wanted, the objective statements grew in number and complexity, ultimately creating SOM. S/O Logic (as SOM's basis) can now be viewed as the first Intellectual pattern designed to fend off society's grip on the Q-Intellect. OK, it was flawed, and created problems in the long run, but - Hey ! - it still did the trick, no ? Yes, but it also limited greatly what we were allowed to speak about. So much that it killed a large part of our conscience, and that it took a truly heroic struggle to revive this dead part of ourselves, and for that there's only Robert Pirsig to thank. He really is a mythic character. Now, the MOQ has destroyed SOM's self-restraining grip on the Intellectual level, and we're free at last. "Free at last ! Free at last ! Thank you God, we are Free at last !" Be good Denis MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
