dmb had said:
...Pirsig is giving us his own version but the basic categories really
shouldn't be contentious or confusing. Sorry, but all these weird questions and
bizarre suggestions about defining levels, adding levels, putting levels
between levels, it's all just a bunch of boring nonsense that never, ever goes
anywhere. Yawn. Please wake me when it's over.
John said to dmb (apparently):
Well, not to be boring but the reason we continually re-think our categories is
because that's what intellect does. Holding purely to the dogmatic beliefs of
yesterday is what religious thinking does. The static latches that we hold and
pass on to our generations something only humans do. Quite a few animal species
band together to hunt and for protection. Only we humans ask why, and how, and
what, and then pass on our knowledge. Only we create mythic structures of
explanation. To ignore the religious roots of intellect, is to miss a very big
point.
dmb says:
Well, that's typical. To construe your "boring nonsense that never, ever goes
anywhere" as intellectually respectable and to construe my refusal to deal with
"a bunch of boring nonsense" as some kind of dogmatism is just more
self-serving bullshit. This is how every ignorant crank defends his nonsense.
People don't reject his ideas because they are bad ideas, he tells himself, but
because the world isn't ready to accept his brilliant cutting-edge genius. This
attitude is almost always (99.999% of the time) downright delusional. Of all
the people who ever thought they were the next Einstein, only one of them was
actually Einstein. I never knew the man but, dude, you are definitely not
Einstein. If every informed voice is telling you that you're not making any
sense, John, maybe it's time to consider the possibility that you're simply not
making sense (instead of imagining there is a conspiracy to silence your
brilliant ideas). To say, for example, that the ants and the bees "h
ave social structures hard-wired into their DNA" only demonstrates a lack of
comprehension of the basic categories. From Plato to Pirsig and everyone in
between, nobody thinks that insects have social level values. That's simply the
wrong idea. That's not what they meant and it doesn't make any sense. Maybe you
could see this if you didn't spend so much time and energy flattering yourself.
The question is not whether we're free to think but whether that thinking has
any quality or merit. It's not about accepting or rejecting "dogma" but rather
accepting or rejecting a bunch of boring non-sense.
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