Mati and all: Here's a thought. The questions express legitimate concerns, of course, but maybe they have to be re-framed a bit. I'm looking at the first question in particular...
The first question from the committee was: How does your definition or understanding of intellectual level/value differentiate the social level from the intellectual level as well as social values from intellectual values? Please provide examples of both intellectual and social values and share how your definitions of each level are able to clearly discern the levels. It seems to me that the historical moments and movement and ideologies and isms used as examples in Pirsig's explanation, along with all other such events in Western history - all that stuff is the raw data. Even the difference between them is explained in terms of an historical shift. I mean, history doesn't just provide examples. History is the data. The MOQ's static levels represent a theory that organizes that data into a coherent picture the same way that evolutionary theory makes sense of all those fossils, etc. I guess that's why I've been trying to make a case as to why Pirsig's examples are so important, because that's what the theory is meant to explain. This should even be able to predict future conflicts and wars to some extent. Pirsig was explaining Islam's relation with the West in terms of social and intellectual values, in terms of letting the biological forces loose, ten years before it became a problem as we know it today. And one could have probably predict ed the upsurge of social level values following 9/11 here in this country, just as nations have always rallied in war time and in times of crisis, for example. The shift in Estonia's culture is not something I can imagine very well, but I suppose the thing to do would be to generate some kind of survey that is designed to elicit opinions on a wide range of issues. The trick would be to ask questions that are somehow connected to either one set of values or the other. If the theory makes sense in terms of recent history, in terms of historical political conflicts then it should work to make sense of the present movements as well. In effect, polling the Estonians would be testing the theory. Does the theory organize the data there the same way it organizes the data more generally in the wider West. Of course, I can almost imagine how that survey might take shape to survey attitudes in the American culture but Post-Soviet Scandinavians... that's downright exotic to me. Assuming this scenario isn't entirely hypothetical, maybe it would be useful to explain what you noticed over there, what you hoped to look for or look at. Thanks, dmb _________________________________________________________________ Time for vacation? WIN what you need- enter now! http://www.gowindowslive.com/summergiveaway/?ocid=tag_jlyhm 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/
