Most Excellent!
SA
[Khoo Hock]
> 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
>
=== message truncated ===
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