dmb, First off, of course all this is just an analogy... (rhetorical trick 101)
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 12:17 PM, david <[email protected]> wrote: > "Is society going to dominate intellect or is intellect going to dominate > society? And if society wins, what's going to be left of intellect? And > if intellect wins what's going to be left of society?" > > J: you have to have both. You certainly can't have either, all by themselves. And intellect dominated society is still a society so it's not in the interest of intellectual patterns to overthrow all social patterns anymore than it's in the interest of society to do away with biology. That's what I mean by the fallacy of antagonism between the levels. > "Intellect is not an extension of society any more than society is an > extension of biology. Intellect is going its own way, and in doing so is > at war with society, seeking to subjugate society." > > "going its own way" and "subjugation of" are mutually contradictory. I realize I'm arguing with Pirsig here, but imho, his personal conflicts with society colored his perception of the interrelations between the social and the intellectual to an extent that misleads unto a false conclusion of universal antagonism between these levels. An intellect loving society does look for and encourage new ideas and an intellect hating society does not and over time the intellect loving society is going to dominate intellect hating societies. But the conflict between these societies is obviously social in nature, period. If intellect were social in nature, then there would be no need for a 4th level. But intellect cannot be just hanging out there in space, and idea with nobody to think it - so intellect must be individual. > "Once intellect has been let out of the bottle of social restraint, it is > almost impossible to put it back in again. And it is immoral to try. A > society that tries to restrain the truth for its own purposes is a lower > form of evolution than a truth that restrains society for its own purposes." > According to the Many Truths doctrine, Every society has it's own truth. Only intellect can decide what is objectively true. And here I mean by objective, not subject to any particular social constraint. self-interest is a social constraint. It would not be seen as more moral, if it were also not more successful. That is, evolution talks about adaptive and the MoQ talks about adaptive but these terms are interchangeable in an interpretive sense. Intellect - oriented societies prevail over social oriented ones. Excellent! I've been looking for this phraseology (intellect -oriented). In an intellect-oriented society, intellect is not in competition with society. No more than a society is in competition with the biological beings who undergird its patterns. > "When the social climate changes from preposterous social restraint of all > intellect to a relative abandonment of all social patterns, the result is a > hurricane of social forces. That hurricane is the history of the twentieth > century." > > The 20th century opened with Victorian dominance - the British Empire upon which the sun never set - but it's important to remember that that WAS an intellect-oriented society. Part of the strength of that society, compared to all others, was its devotion to rationality. If that's the proper society to have, then Pirsig is advocating Victorianism. That puts him on the side of Rigel, eh? I would say that in general, the MoQ advocates betterness and its better to be wholly balanced, with each level in its place and supportive of all the others. If there's war between the levels, then there's an imbalance somewhere. That imbalances occur, is a good thing for the MoQ to aknowledge. That they are inevitable, is not. "..the day Socrates died to establish the independence of intellectual > patterns from their social origins. Or the day Descartes decided to start > with himself as an ultimate source of reality. These were days of > evolutionary transformation." > > John said to dmb: > I just want to make a point that seems silly, because it's so obvious, but > the patterns only compete within an individual's mental choices. Once they > are put into action, they are all, at least somewhat, social. Social > patterns only compete with intellectual patterns when they pull an > individual attention toward one direction or another. If that person > decides to be more intellect-oriented, he's going to have to find a > society, in order for that intellect to have any reality. Thus all > competition is necessarily social in nature, and intellect does not get > involved in taking sides. ... > > > dmb says: > You keep repeating this idea that individuals are intellectual while > society is social. This causes all kinds of confusion and it's obviously > not true. That societies are social is a semantic tautology so its hard to see how that part can be obviously not true, and that intellect is an individual attribute is supported by the idea that what intellect means is "being objective" i.e., thinking about what is true as opposed to mere social opinion. That was what Socrates and Descartes etc. were all about. And face it Dave, the structure of the MoQ itself suggests that since intellect is not social, (how can the 4th level be the 3rd?) then it must be individual. I'll be interested to read your thoughts on this point, dmb: > Any philosophical discussion is demonstrative proof that intellectual > values are a collective property, belong to the whole society. J: well since "discussion" implies two or more individuals, I can't disagree there. But new intellectual ideas come to individuals, not commitees. However, I agree completely that they occur to individuals in the context of some social conflict or disagreement. I don't think you can eliminate or derogate the importance and ubiquity of social patterns. We humans are a mixture, for sure. dmb: > One of Pirsig prime examples of intellectual values is the Bill of Rights, > as matter of fact. Obviously, the nation's highest laws are all about > society and yet they are not "social" values. J: To be sure, they are. They are intellectually oriented social values. It's a tricky distinction, I admit, but a good one I believe. dmb: > The question for our time is which level of values is going to be in > charge and taking sides is the whole point in an evolutionary morality! > Pirsig says repeatedly that intellectual values should be in charge - > because they're more moral. J: Yes, I understand what he ( and you means) but I think it's better to say that intellectual society should be in charge. What a social-oriented society is, is simply a self-serving society. One that doesn't care what's true, it just wants to be in power. And intellect oriented society is one that wants to hold together in the normal ongoing way, but remain open to evolutionary change. I think we can all salute that flag. dmb: > While it's true that this conflict also exist within individuals, the > political conflict between social and intellectual values plays itself out > as a contest between a society run by wealth and power and society based on > rights and social justice. He's talking about the intense rivalry between > fascism and communism in Europe and in the USA this is a milder form of > right vs left; fundamentalists and free market conservatives vs New Deal > liberals. The latter form of liberalism emerged about 100 years ago, just > as Pirsig says. > > jc: I don't have much problem with all that, except of course it's kind of simplistic, as any quick synopsis must necessarily be. And it bothers me that none of this tells us how to proceed from here. In America, our devout individualism has produced the corpocracy that dwarfs any democratic government's controls. Whatever liberal dissent you can imagine, that giant just laughs and brushes you off like a flea. Inexorably the economic power of the few, dwarfs the spending power of the many. That's a process that grinds on regardless of whose in power, Demicans or Republicrats. Given those choices I'd rather not play. I'm holding out for a Quality Party. John 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
