Hello everyone

> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 17:36:14 +0100
> Subject: Re: [MD] What is culture in the MOQ?
>
> Dan, Steve and moqtalk
>
> 4 Jan. Dan commented Steve's comment to Khoo's:
>
> Khoo:
>>>> If I recall my Sociology 101, culture is defined as the sum total
>>>> of knowledge that groups of humans share.
>
> Steve:
>>> This is an SOM definition of culture since SOMists only know about
>>> intellectual patterns but not social patterns.
>Bo:
> Hope this isn't irony (possibly directed my way) because it is just
> right.. IMO

Dan:
Why would those dirty rotten SOM scoundrels know about intellectual patterns 
and not social patterns? Doesn't it take the MOQ to illuminate both those 
concepts? I know it did in my case. 

>Steve:
>>> Handshakes are certainly part of culture but are not knowledge.
>Bo:
> Culture is just a wider social concept .. IMO.

Dan:
You're saying that culture doesn't include ideas?

>
> ----------------
>
> Dan comments:
>
>> I think the MOQ defines culture as the collection of social and
>> intellectual patterns of value of a given people.
>Bo:
> One can't have a collection of two upper levels without it being a
> collection of all levels and all levels means intellect as top notch and
> thus an "intellectual" -- um -- culture. A SOM culture that (as Steve
> says) doesn't know anything about social patterns (nor that its own is
> intellectual I may add) Only from MOQ's meta-level the Q-context is
> seen.

Dan:
As you know, I don't subscribe to your theory that the MOQ is a "meta-level." 
The MOQ is Robert Pirsig's idea and as such is a collection of intellectual 
patterns of value. That aside, the MOQ clearly states that culture is a 
collection of social and intellectual static patterns of value of a given 
people. A SOM culture (in which we all live) might say that culture is formed 
by the collective agreement of individuals within a given group. I don't see 
much of a difference. It's more a matter of where one starts, I suppose. 

>Dan:
>> Handshakes are social patterns until a person begins to study them.
>> At that point, they become intellectual patterns of value. For
>> instance...
>Bo:
> Intellect is treating social customs as subjective because they are
> something that only exist in people's mind and varies from one social
> group to another.

Dan:
Yes, though I would go so far as to say that the MOQ treats social customs as 
subjective (in the SOM sense) too. 

>Bo:
> You ended your story about handshaking thus
>>Dan:
>> I am intellectually manipulating the socially symbolic handshake to
>> gain a desired end.
>Bo:
> You want the "symbol manipulation" intellect to apply, but this is not
> what Pirsig means, but the ability to pick up social signals, important
> nevertheless, we are social beings too, but not the 4th level.

Dan:
Please provide a quote to support your statement. Perhaps that would clarify 
things for me here.

>
>> Thoughts?
>Bo:
> My thoughts were and are that LILA postulates an immune system at
> each level, but (also) calls intellect's system "the cultural immune
> system)
>
> "It was not something that he could talk about without
> being slammed by the cultural immune system, being
> thought crazy, and with his record it was not good to invite that
> suspicion."
>
> He is correct about psychiatry being the 4th. level's immune
> apparatus, but the "culture" concept muddles things. There are
> cultures that don't have a notion of disturbed people as mentally ill,
> they believe them possessed by evil spirits or by the devil ...etc. So my
> conclusion is that these are social level cultures, only the West has
> this "psychic" immune system and consequently is the only intellectual
> level civilization. This proves for the umpteenth time that intellect is the
> S/O distinction, in this context the mental/corporeal, psychic/somatic
> variants.

Dan:
I take it from this that you see Western culture as a collection of 
intellectual patterns of value only. I think you are being forced into this 
misinterpretation of the MOQ as a consequence of your own "invisible wall of 
prejudice" (your SOL theory). 

Thank you,

Dan







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