Dave T.
[Bo's]
> > I'm not sure if Matt objects to the Greeks "... created the
> > divisions, or whether they were created by somebody else" but for
> > the umpteenth time it's plain that they laid down the foundations
> > and that SOM evolved through fits and starts to ever new versions,
> > the mind/matter stage only emerging with Descartes.
> > Another Eureka! See. even Matt recognizes that the intellectual
> > LEVEL (of the later MOQ) starts with the subject/object
> > differentiation.
> [Dave]
> What makes so little sense to me is Pirsig starts with Indians and
> their plain talking, here and now, value based, "good dog" ways of
> being. He expands on that suggesting these Indian ways have
> similarities to Oriental being particularly Zen. .....
Agree, LILA starts with some anthropologic reasoning, how impossible
the Boas and Mead "objective" approach is without having Value as
their premises. Ian McLean brought this LILA quote in the "Bottom up
creation .." thread
"And yet, although Jefferson called this doctrine of social
equality "self-evident," it is not at all self-evident. ...There's no
nation in Europe that doesn't trace its history to a time when it
was "self-evident" that all men are created unequal. ...The idea
that 'all men are created equal" is a gift to the world from the
American Indian." -end of Ch. 3, Lila
This is one of Pirsig's many silly detours. All nomadic people are
socially equal, but this is clearly not from the deeper cultural upheaval
which is described as SOM in ZAMM and corresponds to the
intellectual level in LILA where all examples of intellectual patterns are
born of the "objective-over-subjective" attitude.
Course the "old Europe" - after the Dark Ages - were feudal, but
SOM's rebounce by the Renaissance slowly caused the true Q-
intellect-based equality.
To suggest the nomadic Amerindians' social equality being identical
with the intellectual level's "democracy, human rights, freedom of
speech, trial by jury, independent judicial system ...etc... " is nonsense.
Even sillier is it to suggest that the Indians - in addition - having
achieved some Q-like stance. Admittedly, social existence is value-
based, but the Quality overview is supposed to emerge from a well-
developed SOM.
> All the while criticizing the shortcoming of the Western (SOM) approach
> to knowledge.
Right, in LILA SOM has become "knowledge" and/or "scientific
knowledge" and note how this is in contrast to - or grows out of - the
social level, so it's more than plain that SOM is the intellectual LEVEL,
but each time this conclusion "threatens" Pirsig backs away.
> Then at the end of the day when developing the MoQ that he would place
> the very approach he criticizes, SOM science, as the sole source
> intellectual knowledge just doesn't make sense.
Ah. But will it never dawn on you that SOM is a great value, it has
brought the "patterns" mentioned in LILA - modernity for short - but
that all ills stems from the S/O divide being regarded as existences
fundament, that the split between subject and object, between
mind/matter is a bottomless abyss. That a material world goes its
course governed by natural laws totally independent and indifferent to
our subjective - mental - ideas about it. The cake can be kept and
eaten by its "M" being removed and the S/O relegated the role of
MOQ's 4th level which - regardless of being the highest static good still
is subordinated the DQ/SQ constellation.
And that's all for today
Bodvar
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/
