[MD] Intellectual and Social

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Platt, Bruce,

More Pirsig on the struggles:


"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 in 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.  It's possible to see Lila as something much greater than a customary
sociological or anthropological description would have her be.  Lila then
becomes a complex ecology of patterns moving toward Dynamic Quality.  Lila
individually, herself, is in an evolutionary battle against the static
patterns of her own life."

"That's why the absence of suffering last night seemed so ominous and her
change to what looked like suffering today gave Phædrus a feeling she
was getting better.  If you eliminate suffering from this world you
eliminate life.  There's no evolution.  Those species that don't
suffer don't survive.  Suffering is the negative face of the Quality
that drives the whole process.  All these battles between patterns of
evolution go on within suffering individuals like Lila."

"And Lila's battle is everybody's battle, you know? Sometimes the insane and
the contrarians and the ones who are the closest to suicide are the most
valuable people society has.  They may be precursors of social change.
They've taken the burdens of the culture onto themselves, and in their
struggle to solve their own problems they're solving problems for the
culture as well."

Platt said:
> Excellent. These "struggles" between and within moral levels is central to
> understanding the MOQ. The one remaining question that I don't think anyone
> has answered is: "Are moral values and their struggles empirical facts?

Steve:
I'm not sure what you mean by "empirical facts." If you are just
asking if they are real, I don't know why anyone would doubt that
these struggles were real so I wouldn't no where to begin in arguing
that they are real.

Best,
Steve