I called Bob the other day. Hi Bob. My friends and I were wondering how to define the intellectual level. We were asking questions about why it should be in charge of things, how it relates to the social level, and its relation to individual intelligence. You know, stuff like that. So I wanted to ask you about the intellectuals after WWI, the ones you wrote about in chapter 22. You said there was a flaw in their metaphysics and that it created a certain kind of terrible lonliness. How is this intellectual flaw related to existential lonliness? (PAGE 283) "Everyone seemed to be guided by an "objective," "scientific" view of life that told each person that his essential self is his evolved material body. Ideas and societies are a component of brains, not the other way around. No two brains can merge physically, and therefore no two people can ever really communicate except in the mode of ship's radio operators sending messages back and forth in the night. A scientific, intellectual culture had become a culture of millions of isolated people living and dying in little cells of psychic solitary confinement, unable to talk to one another, really, and unable to judge one another because scientifically speaking it is impossible to do so." Oh. And you're saying they're wrong. That it is the other way around. You're saying that brains are just components of social and intellecual values. Wow. That IS quite different than the standard view. It certainly helps explain the amorality of science. How does the MOQ propose to fix the intellectual level's SOM disease? (PAGE 298) "What the larger intellectual structure of the MoQ makes clear is that this political battle of science to free itself from domination by social moral codes was in fact a MORAL battle! It was the battle of a higher, intellectual level of evolution to keep itself from being devoured by a lower, social level of evolution." Whew! I was afraid you'd get all anti-intellectual on me there. I should have known. That's not your style. The intellectual level should be in charge because it is the most evolved level, even if it needs improvement. The intellectual level is supposed to free itself from domination by social values. So how does the MOQ's expanded view include morals in its science? How is the intellectual level supposed to include social values? (PAGE 299) "Once this political battle is resolved, the MoQ can then go back and re-ask the question, Just exactly HOW independent IS science, in FACT, from society? The answer it gives is, "not at all." A science in which social patterns are of no account is as unreal and absurd as a society in which biological pattterns are of no account. It's an impossibility." Makes sense. Its hard to imagine a pack of dogs without any dogs. So how does this inter-dependence of the level relate to SOM's lonliness? (PAGE 299) "The MoQ resolves the relationship between intellect and society, subject and object, mind and matter, by embedding all of them in a larger system of understanding. Objects are inorganic and biological values; subjects are social and intellectual values. They are not two mysterious universes that go floating around in some subject-object dream that allows them no real contact with one another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary relationship. That evolutionary relationship is also a moral one." Ok. Its all starting to seem like one big picture. Its like a grand progression of evolutionary morality and it requires the preservation of the progress of the past. Intellect ought not destroy or be dominated by lower levels of static quality. We need intellectuals who appreciate that they can only exist by standing on the sholders of giants, so to speak. OK. Suppose we extract all the SOM flaws, reintegrate "subjective" values back into our science and everything starts evolving like it should. What's the point? Where is all that evolutionary morality headed? What's the purpose of intellectual value? (PAGE 300) "The cells Dynamically invented animals to preserve and improve their situation. The animals Dynamically invented societies, and societies Dynamically invented intellectual knowledge for the same reasons. Therefore, to the question, 'What is the purpose of all this intellectual knowledge?' the MoQ answers, 'The fundamental purpose of knowledge is to Dynamically improve and preserve society.' Knowledge has grown away from this historic purpose and become an end in itself just as society has grown away from its original purpose of preserving physical human beings and become an end in itself, and this growing away from original purposes toward greater Quality is a moral growth." Of course. Its the same as it always was. Its all about betterness. Its about making things better. I admire the pragmatism of that. But how does the MOQ include social values without turning into a Rigelistic moralizer like I hear on talk radio? (PAGE 300) "Intellect can support static patterns of society without fear of domination by carefully distinguishing those moral issues that are social-biological from those that are intellectual-social and making sure there is not encroachment either way. What's at issue here isn't just a clash of society and biology but a clash of two entirely different CODES of morals in which society is the middle term. You have a society-vs.-biology code of morals and you have an intellect-vs.-society code of morals. It wasn't Lila Rigel was attacking, it was this intellect-vs-society code of morals." Yea I've noticed that the Victorians love to talk about morals and character alot. But they're defending the wrong codes. That explains the fascination with celebrities and sex scandals. Seems that guys like Richard Rigel and Rush Limbaugh just love to blame the sixties and that whole thing. Thats why they called Clinton a "counter-culture McGovern-nick". (PAGE 301) "Rigel's interpetation of recent moral history is probably a pretty simple one; old codes vs. new chaos. But a MoQ says it's not that simple. ... The Hippies have been interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the period following their departure as a "return to values," whatever that means. The Metaphysics of Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie revolution was a moral movement. The present period is the collapse of values." So, ironically, the so-called return of traditional values is really an evolutionary regression or a phase of devolution. Wow. But all this is about national moods and historical movements and evolutionary progress. What can I do as an individual in the face of all that? It seems so over-whelming. (FROM PAGE 360) "If you compare the levels of static patterns that compose a human being to the ecology of a forest, and if you see the different patterns sometimes in competition with each other, sometimes is symbiotic support of each other, but always in a kind of tension that will shift one way or the other, depending on evolving circumstances, then you can also see that evolution doesn't take place only within societies, it takes place within individuals too." Oh. Well then. I better get busy. Bye Bob. Then I hung up without remembering to thank him. MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
