Dear all, Stealing away from the distraction of the very exciting presidential primaries season of madness and mayhem (as some cultures would have it) if I may ask : isn't all this reductionist analysing to death of what culture is, of what the four levels are and of the nature of Quality itself THE PURE EXPRESSION of the intellectual process that Western Philosophy has identified itself with.
Yes we have figured out how the atom bomb works and how to get to Mars and turn ordinary cells to stem cells from this intellectual process, but have we figured out how to resolve the question of morphogenesis, and where the mind is in the brain, and where the meme is in the gene ? If I recall my Sociology 101, culture is defined as the sum total of knowledge that groups of humans share. Where does culture reside ? In a brain, in a library, in a ritual, in an insight ? And is it not a living breathing thing, culture evolves around us, adapt to new technologies and times. Funny how we try to FIX culture into one of the four levels when it is in each of the levels and all the levels at the same time. Each culture has its own metaphysics, cosmology if you will. Each probably deal with their equivalent of the Metaphysics of Quality in its own way. We just have not got round to "defining" one for Western Civilisation yet. Each culture has its own priests (or imams) as you will, to mediate between their Gods of Quality and "us folks" who cannot communicate with Quality directly. And when religions organise around them, they become frauds inevitably. In other words, they do the defining for us. But is not the Church of Reason held in high disdain already ? Do we need the defamation of being called a priest for defending Pirsig ? Doesn't Pirsig, very definitely a mere mortal, not a God, point us to a trascendent experience of Quality beyond the very ordinary subject object metaphysics ? Its all at the very edge of science and the very threshold of our imagination: the possibility of morphogenetic fields which hold patterns of each level and all levels together; each having lives of their own. Oh dear, my late buddhist teacher has reminded me over and over again not to let my excessive intellectualisations get in the way of directly experiencing reality and achieving insight, and wisdom and perhaps Quality. I do get carried away. Now back to the races: there's a bit of culture in that, and perhaps more. Rgds Khoo Hock Aun On 1/4/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi David (MB) > > You said on 3 January: > > > Bo said: > > > "There are no MOQ patterns across two levels, but lots of words that > > > straddles many levels." > > > dmb says: > > What? Except for purely inorganic patterns, all of them cross levels. > > You may mean (I desperately look for excuses) that inorganic > patterns (AKA "matter") are what the biological level exploits for > own purpose and so on upwards resulting in the intellectual level > having all lower levels as layers below itself? In that sense yes, > but that does not make social patterns intellectual ditto. > > > Words, for example, when written are physical, when spoken are > > biological, when used to communicate are social and when used to > > philosophize are intellectual. > > Language is neither inorganic nor biological, it is and remains a > social pattern, but when Intellect lodged on top of Society, > language along with the rest of the level were exploited for > intellectual purposes. But language isn't intellectual in itself, no > more than body is "social" even if it belongs to a social being, or > a particular molecule becomes biological if situated inside a living > organism. Elementary Dr. Buchanan! > > > Culture exists across the entire range of levels as well. So do people. > > Hopefully, you and your linseed oil know this already. > > Intellect - or SOM - uses the term "culture" freely across ITS > range (not levels because intellect doesn't recognize the level > context) and speaks about bacteria cultures and whatnot. The > linseed oil point I did not catch ...oh (after some time) painting ;-). > > > Why would crossing levels be a problem? What would prohibit such a > > claim and why would you want to? I don't get it. It seems you have very > > different ideas attached to each of the key terms. > > The problem is Pirsig's postulating an immune system for each > level and calling the intellectual such "a cultural immune system". > > Obviously no culture wants its legal patterns violated, and > when they are, an immune system takes over in ways that > are analogous to a biological immune system. The > deviant dangerous source of illegal cultural patterns is > first identified, then isolated and finally destroyed as a > cultural entity. That's what mental hospitals are partly for. > And also heresy trials. They protect the culture from > foreign ideas that if allowed to grow unchecked could > destroy the culture itself. That was what Phædrus had > seen in the psychiatric wards, people trying to convert > him back to "objective reality." > > He is correct in spotting "the mental hospitals" (psychiatry) as > intellect's agents - look to the last about "objective reality". But > either the culture term is identical to the Western civilization or > dropped from the MOQ, because there are obviously cultures > that don't match MOQ's intellectual level and have no mental > (mental/corporeal) institutions. > > To prevent you from objecting that "culture" is a social entity (in > this particular context) LILA goes on: > > Well, because police are never intellectual about > anything. They're just stooges for the social system. > They revere the social system and hate intellectuals. It > was a sort of caste thing. The police were low-caste. > Intellectuals were above all that crime-and-violence sort > of thing that the police were constantly engaged in. > > Here is the "social immune system" consisting of police and other > "law & order" agents. > > These are deep insights, but marred by the "all cultures as > intellect" blunder. The MOQ will never take off until the source of > all these flaws - the misdefined intellectual level - is corrected. > Pirsig would have been superhuman if not things were > overlooked in this immense endeavour and it does not subtract > from his greatness to point it out, but you (all) act like Imams > protecting the faith. > > IMO > > Bo > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] 6016-301 4079 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
