A, Thanks for the recommendation to this Koestler fellow, I had never heard of him before.
About levels... First, I just composed my reply to Mark's (118's) post, so to get a sense of my frame of mind it might be best to read that reply before starting on this one. About levels, I just don't see what good there is for me to get too into it. Thinking about them casually is one thing. Knowing that there are these different sources of influence on me (and others), and being reminded to consider them all if I get caught up in a bad pattern (or if someone else seems caught in a bad pattern) seems helpful. But I really don't see a point to trying to make a physics of it. I guess this is the crux of a lot of my efforts so far here: am I missing something big? I happen to have read a little about Hitler for the first time a few months back, so I can offer a couple things here too. My understanding is that Pirsig was on point when he said that Hitler was very much taken by the patterns of his Victorian society. I don't know a thing about victorian society though :) My understanding is that he was considered a mediocre artist and a mediocre intellectual, and that he very much wanted to be an important member of society. I don't know if it was the want of power, or fame, or respect, but perhaps it was this that Pirsig was talking about when he mentioned Hitler's being dominated by biological patterns. Now, as you mentioned, I guess the "biological moral" is: in the battle between biology and biology, biology can do as it will. But I don't recall Pirsig giving us any rules for morality within a level! So, to the extent that there was a battle between a jewish society and and Aryan society, and at the societal level, it seems all was moral. But I think that that was the intellectual argument offered by the Nazis, or perhaps it was just their hope. In reality jews were part of a german society... so the intellectual level is supposed to solve the moral problem. But, the intellectual level is the highest static level, so if there is no intellectual resolution, to what is the intellect to yield morally? I guess the presumption is that there is an absolute truth which judges intelligence fairly. I don't know what Phaedrus would say. But, I do think that he would not accept your having granted Hitler a mainly intellectual basis for his suicide! As I understand, Hitler had a preoccupation with suicide throughout his life, and many times when his movement hit a bump in the road he gave in to despair and mentioned that he should just kill himself. Now, you said, "But what he [Hitler] did was enslaving intellect under society, by a totalitarian ideology." I have two directions to go with this. The old one you know: (I haven't decided yet on your wording, but let me play with it here and see what you think) if the biological level "informs" the inorganic level about morality, and it the social level "informs" the biological level about morality, and if the intellectual level "informs" the social level about morality, and if the dynamic level is pre-intellectual, what informs the intellectual level of its morality? How is one to judge a totalitarian ideology? It is an intellectual conception. Whatever the intellect will inform society about will have a societal flavor, but a totalitarian ideology is an intellectual idea. It is difficult for me to imagine some absolute truth answering: false! For mathmatics, and for science on the inorganic level, perhaps absolute truth has meaning. But for social questions I think the whole point is that there may not be absolute truth; or if there is, which may be a better presumption, we can't obtain to an objective vantage to know it! Perhaps Phaedrus would say that the Dynamic level will work it out in the end. But this isn't quite satisfying. So I have this second direction. Perhaps freedom will give us a clue! Still we will not have the objective vantage with which to be sure, but it seems that freedom might suggest the answer! Let me start with another example. Murder. If we can ask, intellectually, is murder moral or immoral? Is Murder high quality or low quality? Let us not look at the margins for the moment, but at the center, think of the the murder of a nice, well-behaved child... playing in the park one fine, summer afternoon. The murderer might argue that he should be free "from" restriction in this regard; the universe values freedom, you should not put this barrier before me; the universe is more interesting if I can murder at my whim, and that is why I was able to do it; if reality wanted to prevent me, it would have done so; there are plenty of possibilities that life has denied me: I can't fly like a bird, or hold my breath like a while, etc. and etc. This is a very intellectual argument; I don't think that there can be a doubt about that much. But is it short-sighted? or provincial? The fact is, reality does restrict certain seeming-possibilities. There is another argument. Just like I do not have wings like a bird, if I am restricted from Murder... Let me say it this way: if we restrict ourselves from Murder, perhaps that restriction opens up more freedom elsewhere! Just like if the atoms of a DNA molecule restrict themselves to their highly ordered configuration, rather than a lightly ordered inorganic pattern, animals can go about flying in the air all over the globe, swimming to all depths of all the seas, and walking about the Earth loving and thinking, etc. and etc. Murder is but one possible action, which has very depressing repercussions; while the restriction from murder is also one action, but which has much more lively repercussions. If we could obtain to a perfectly objective vantage on the matter, perhaps it would be overwhelmingly obvious that there are more options in a society free of murder than there are in a society open too it. Does freedom pick not-murder over murder? The intellectual idea of a totalitarian state might be defeated by a similar analysis. Though of course any such analysis, due to our position subjectively within the problem, suffers from a lack of objectivity: that is, we must always worry that our results are too short-sighted or too provincial. I don't know if this is what Phaedrus thought when he identified dynamic quality as freedom... But even if it is, and even if it is on point, and even if it is useful for something like murder, I don't see how it can be very useful for close calls. Like Lila, marital infidelity? How are the levels (freedom) going to help me answer that question? In fact, it seems that any reliance on an intellectual prognosis based on the levels will only take me from the best dynamic answer and lead me into trouble. Like I said to Mark, I think this whole analysis of levels is a tool for getting out of the "muddle", it is a tool for maintenance when the dynamic machine is out of tune. Tim -- [email protected] -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Access your email from home and the web 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/md/archives.html
