Hi
I'm responding to your letter regarding social quality. You make a lot of
points so I'll address them one at a time.
First, you assert that society doesn't have intellectual quality. I have
to disagree. Society is made up of individuals. Individuals have
intellectual quality. How, then, can this disappear once individuals form
into a group? It violates one of the basic laws of the universe: nothing is
created or destroyed, it just changes form. This is where I think the term
"collective consciousness" comes in. It's a intellect on a social scale.
Now, is this intellect the same as individual intellect? No. It's certainly
not as dynamic. But a society has the capacity to debate, have public
discussions, enact laws, etc.
Your second point was that nurturing others and our individaul selves
does not jibe with what Pirsig would say. You cite some Victorian values as
the reason why an investment in the dynamic develepoment of self and others
is not the highest form of social quality. But I must say that we are no
longer following the Victorian social code. We're now using another set of
social codes that have more quality. That is, logic and reason and science.
Now, this current social code is better the the one before for a number of
reasons, but in Lila Pirsig himself says that this current code is not the
best because it "has undermined the static social values necessary to prevent
deterioration." He goes on, "In it's condemnation of social repression as
the enemy of liberty, it has never come forth with a single moral principal
that distinguishes Galileo fighting social repression from a common criminal
fighting social repression. It, as a result, has beent he champion of both."
(Lila, pg. 351) It's fom Pirsig's own theory that I've surmised that the
highest social quality would be to invest energy into the dynamic
development of yourself or others on whatever level they are most lacking;
because someone cannot be an effective crusader for social change, or
otherwise have social quality, if his biological needs are not met. So that
is where the help goes to. Now, this must is also true for ourselves. We
must first invest in ourselves so that our biological and social needs are
met before we can tackle them with others. Again, I defer to Pirsig as a
rational for my theory, "Today we are living in an intellectual and
technological paradise and a moral and social nightmare because the
intellectual level of evolution, in it's struggle to become free of the
social level, has ignored the social level's role in keeping the biological
level under control. Intellectuals have failed to understand the ocean of
biological quality that is constantly being suppressed by the social quality."
Finally, you said you are glad that society produces warriors that
protect the freedoms you enjoy. By making such a statment I get the feeling
that you're not keeping MOQ divisions in mind. I agree, having soldiers in
the military to protect and promote the intellectual pattern of freedom and
justice is a very good thing. However, that same society produces soldiers
such as gang members and the mob, which threaten those same patterns. My
point about Tom Cruise having less social quality than Mother Theresa was
that she was effecting a greater change on individuals' dynamic development.
Mr. Cruise's movies can be entertaining at best but Mother Theresa gave
herself to raise people beyond their biological suffering to a social and
intellectual level. I cannot say the same of Mr. Cruise.
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