Hi Glenn, MF
>GLENN REMAINS UNCONVINCED THE INTELLECT DESERVES ITS OWN LEVEL.
The devision between Society and Intellect is definatly the most
difficult one, and we need to get it right to go up one level, but
here are a few points that I think make it clearer in light of your
statements:
>One great prediction that MOQ should make is the next evolutionary
>level, but Pirsig doesn't really take a serious stab at it. He may well
>have if he hadn't chosen the highest level as the Intellectual level,
>because, as I outlined in my first post last month, there is a beautiful
>containment relationship running through the lower levels, which Pirsig
>himself points out:
>
> cells are composed of atoms.
> animals are composed of cells.
> societies are composed of animals.
>
>But he (conveniently) doesn't point out the contradiction:
> intellects are composed of societies??
Society main goal is the sum of happiness of it's inhabitants (For
example a country), even at the expense of individuals.
Intelect creates rights for individuals that counter each society's
rules and thus are universal, spanning many different societies ->
Thus the intellect can span many societies and be "composed" by them.
Of course a society is a lot less tangable thing than a cell,
multiple overlapping societies exist, but Intellect is very directly
the EXACT thing that spans a bridge between them.
>Another important relationship is this idea that a lower level is
>oblivious to any level above it (as Bodvar reminds us). This holds true
>among the lower levels but not between society and the intellect.
>Society is completely aware of the intellect (this is different from
>saying social thinkers completely understand intellectuals.) The
>politicians, the keepers of society's power, no damn well the
>intellectual scientists want to build a cyclotron the size of Texas to
>better understand pure science, but society still holds the purse
>strings and arguments had better be made that this cyclotron contraption
>will benefit our culture, like give us a new weapons technology or a new
>power generation technology, or else you can kiss your cyclotron
>goodbye.
When I read this as the opposite; Since politicians at working at the
society level can't see any value in a cyclotron unless it generates
energy or weapons yet the intellectuals see value in it just for pure
science, surely this means that society level doesn't understand the
intellectual level? I think "unaware" of as you use must be
carefully; "Society" can't understand the what Intellect sees value
in but that's all.
>Now what about philosophers and artists? Except for the most celebrated
>few from these ranks that society can hold up as "poster children" of
>"high culture", the rest are "starving" or marginalized in university
>jobs. The plain facts say something otherwise....
Once again, to me you're conferming that Society doesn't value what
intellect values, "starving"/marginalized are things caused by
society not recognizing intellectual value, or by intellect being
more interested in it's main objectives that gathering
social-valuable assets.
>The intellect is still society's chore-boy. Society is still King Giant.
Well this is a tougher question; Pirsig set the date for Intellect's
dominance in the West at 1918, but I sometimes wonder if it might
have slipped back to society again.... The way people vote nowadays
makes me wonder if we're back to biology (me me me thinking)!
>While social thinkers and intellectuals are clearly different beasts, I
>don't think the difference is great enough to merit a new level,
>compared to the vast organizational gulfs that exist between the other
>three. (In my opinion, in some ways, the Intellectual level is a step
>backward, but I'm not going to get into that here.)
Well this is the really vague part I'll agree; A "social thinker" is
using his intelligence to create more/better rules in the social
level i.e (Marx or someone). He/she is thinking outside a particular
social system, and has thus risen outside it and is at the
Intellectual level.
I think the important thing is to not think of levels containing
atoms/cells/animals/people or whatever, but think of what each levels
goal and values are.
>So if we consider an MOQ, call it MOQ3, that just contains the first 3
>levels, we can more clearly guess what the next level should be. Taking
>the containment relationship one step further we see that it will be a
>composed of societies (cultures) that behaves as one organism, and there
>will be some prime motive force of Dynamic Quality propelling it, in the
>same way that language carries the DQ for the social level. What might
>the prime motive force of the next level be? The Internet? Ha! And would
>this new organism be useful? You bet, since it would most certainly have
>some aspect about it that increases the organism's chances of survival,
>even at the loss of some of the underlying societies.
Well this is still The Intellectual Level to me... I think the
intellectual level would like to unite all societies and have one
answer to each question, thus behaving like one organism; The thing
propelling it would be the underlying level's needs and a quest for
"the truth".
Going to MOQ5
-tor
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
