John to Andre:
According to the MoQ, intellect should rule society - but this is plainly
impossible. The only way intellect can rule over social patterns is within the
mind of an individual... The minute that individual tries to rule over any
other person or society we are at the level of social conflict again.
Andre replied:
I fail to understand what you are trying to say here John. The attempt at
intellectual supremacy over social patterns is the story of the 20th Century
and it is continuing to this day. To say that the intellectual supremacy over
social patterns is 'plainly impossible' is an indication of this battle. [...]
And this is NOT only possible 'within the mind of an individual'. You are
personalizing all the patterns the MoQ talks about. Forget Lila (as a person),
forget Rigel (as a person), forget Phaedrus (as a person). They all represent
values of the differing levels...the differing perspectives...the highest being
inclusive of all the others.
dmb says:
I think you've pointed out one of John's more serious mistakes, Andre. The
problem, "personalizing all the patterns" as you put it, is one of the mistakes
that keeps him from being able to understand the differences between social and
intellectual vales and leads him to the bogus conclusion that an intellectually
led society is "plainly impossible".
Although John hasn't stated it explicitly, there is an assumption at work
behind his claims. Basically, he thinks that intellectual values exist only in
the minds of individuals and social values only exist where there are groups.
Apparently, John thinks all values are social values whenever more than one
person is involved. But when we look at Pirsig's prime examples of intellectual
values, it's clear that this is not the right way to draw the line between
social and intellectual values.
Pirsig describes communism and socialism as "programs for intellectual control
over society," for example, and these political ideologies "were confronted by
the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the social control of
intellect." So the conflict between socialism and fascism, according to the
MOQ, "is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution." This conflict between
levels is not a conflict between society and the individual but rather a
conflict between two kinds of society. An individual can be dominated by social
levels values and a society can be dominated by intellectual values - and vice
versa.
He uses human rights, as they are codified in the Constitution's Bill of Rights
as a prime example of intellectual values too. Like the other "programs for
intellectual control over society," these rights are very much about the values
of a group, of the whole society, and the values which are supposed to guide
governments and nations. And so it is plainly wrong to say, "the only way
intellect can rule over social patterns is within the mind of an individual".
These conflicting levels of values - social and intellectual - both exist in
the culture. Again, the conflict is NOT between society and the individual or
the group against each person. The question is which level of value is given
priority or has more weight in society. It's a question about the quality of
the whole collective CULTURE and its evolutionary status. Culture is the word
he chooses when Pirsig says "a culture that supports the dominance of
intellectual values over social values is absolutely superior to one that does
not."
"...In a subject-object understanding of the world these terms have no meaning.
There is no such thing as "human rights." There is no such thing as moral
reasonableness. There are subjects and objects and nothing else. ..This soup
of sentiments about logically nonexistent entities can be straightened out by
the Metaphysics of Quality. It says that what is meant by "human rights" is
usually the moral code of intellect-vs-society, the moral right of intellect to
be free of social control. Freedom of speech; freedom of assembly, of travel;
trial by jury; habeas corpus; government by consent—these "human rights" are
all intellect-vs-society issues. According to the Metaphysics of Quality these
"human rights" have not just a sentimental basis, but a rational, metaphysical
basis. They are essential to the evolution of a higher level of life from a
lower level of life. They are for real."
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