Hi Arlo, Nothing to regret as far as I can see. My point is not to denigrate the intellectual by any means. The education I received has allowed me to be of use to the community in terms of health care. Currently I am working on cancer drugs which will certainly be beneficial to the individual.
The point I was trying to make involved the mindless following of an individual's words due to his/her "credentials". One is not "somebody" due to his/her biography. One is "somebody" through their daily actions and Will. Quality is every expressing, and not necessarily cumulative. As I have claimed in many previous posts, the scourge of "leaders and followers" can account for much of the low quality which society presents. Nobody can tell us what Quality is. However, paths of high Quality can indeed be proposed. Such proposals do not require cumulative knowledge per se. That Pirsig is not a credentialed philosopher in the Halls of academia makes not difference to me. Technology, which is cumulative and passed on from one generation to the next is progressive, and reduces much suffering from a physical standpoint. I believe the contention in ZMM was that there was an imbalance between the "Truth" which is promoted and the "Quality" which is inherent. Despite the advances in the enumeration of things, at the human core nothing has changed. Despite its structural approach, MoQ seeks to rebalanced the Epistemology/Ontology debate by putting more emphasis on ontology (imo, of course). It is the balance between positivism and realism. Neither alone is sufficient. I believe that when Pirsig suggests to "Kill all Intellectual Patterns", he is providing rhetoric to combat the static world of words that we find ourselves. That is, Stop trying to find truth through words, but rely on something much deeper that we all have. Certainly the concept of killing intellectual patterns is an intellectual pattern. However, the suggestion does open the door for personal balance. It is difficult to open that door using the tools we have been provided by our indoctrinating education, since that is like trying to open a door with the wrong key. The idea is to persuade others to at least try to think differently. It is not dogma, it is rhetoric. So, I am not against intellectuals or their ideas by any means. I enjoy reading posts in this forum, for example. It is possible that extremes are sometimes best dealt with through extremes. The dialectic can indeed bring about balance rather than truth. So, we should not become dumber, we should become more aware (whatever that means). Using the analogy of balance is one method that I use to make sense of things. Cheers, Mark On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 8:22 PM, ARLO J BENSINGER JR <[email protected]> wrote: > [Mark to Marsha] > I spent 6 years doing do doctorate of philosophy (Ph.D.) work, and was > ordained > by the powers that be at Oxford. I then spent years in internship. Does this > make me a philosopher? Does this make me anything? I think not. > > [Arlo] > Maybe it's late. Maybe its the Bourbon. Maybe I'm going to regret this... > > Why does this not make you anything, Mark? Let's step back and say a degree in > Art History doesn't make you a painter (or dancer, or poet, etc), but it still > makes you something. I mean, if it didn't improve you, then what was the > point? > Have we really hit a point when 'knowledge', however defined, is a 'bad > thing'?? > > Can you think, for example, of a single other 'profession' that actually > champions 'never studied this'?... Do you want a surgeon who says "I never > studied this 'heart' crap, but hey, I have certain beliefs about human nature > an that makes me qualified to do this."?... > > See, this is part of this anti-intellectual agenda I don't understand... yes, > there IS a difference between doing philosophy and reading about philosophy, > between being an expert in Nietzsche and not knowing who Nietzsche was... and > call that philosophy/philosophology, but do we really want to turn that into a > championing of ignorance? Do you think Pirsig really meant by that that we > should become dumber to become more enlightenend?... > > 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 > 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
