[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Dave, good to see you again

13 Jan. you said::

> It appears that the bulk of these discussions focusing on the social
> and intellectual patterns have devolved into either banging on Pirsig,
> or on one another, or both. 

> Is there a middle way? Naw, bang¹n fun! It¹s the intellect¹s modus
> operandi.
 
> In ZaMM ³intellect² is mentioned twice. First in the shim episode
> early on when we read: "My own opinion is that the intellect of modern
> man isn¹t that superior.² Then a little later when he became
> disillusioned with Kant , moved to oriental philosophy and then
> dropped out of Beneres in disgust and says: ³He had had the feeling of
> escape from a prison of intellect, and now this was just more of the
> prison again.²

Good idea to search ZAMM for the term "intellect" and "intellectual" 
Dave. The first example "...the intellect of modern man...etc." is a bit 
ambiguous as if there is an intellect of pre-modern man. i.e. that 
"intellect" is a thinking faculty. The second "...prison of intellect"  
however is more like what it's all about, namely REASON or SOM. In 
other words that intellect is NOT thinking itself , but a mode of thinking 
and that another mode is possible. Exactly what the SOL interpretation 
is about.

> ³Intellectual² and its close cousins are used 37 times, the bulk of
> these being critical of it. Summing up, he uses near 25% of this
> allotment on just one page.

Right, and before you rambles on let me say that ZAMM's "intellectual" 
even more closely matches the S/O split and in the Romantic/Classic 
diagram (that RQ/CQ is the precursor of DQ/SQ is obvious) SQ  is 
called "intellectual" that splits into subjective/objective. This "moq" only 
had intellect as the sole static level, but it's pretty obvious that it 
indicates SOM, and - Jeez - how much trouble could Pirsig have saved 
himself if the final MOQ had kept its intellectual leveø=the S/O divide.  


> (Pg 137 of digital copy:) "He felt that intellectuals usually have the
> greatest trouble seeing this Quality, precisely because they are so
> swift and absolute about snapping everything into intellectual form.
> The ones who have the easiest time seeing this Quality are small
> children, uneducated people and culturally "deprived" people. These
> have the least predisposition toward intellectuality from cultural
> sources and have the least formal training to instill it further into
> them. That, he felt, is why squareness is such a uniquely intellectual
> disease. He felt he¹d been accidentally immunized from it, or at least
> to some extent broken from the habit by his failure from school. After
> that he felt no compulsive identification with intellectuality and
> could examine anti-intellectual doctrines with sympathy. Squares, he
> said, because of their prejudices toward intellectuality usually regard
> Quality, the pre-intellectual reality, as unimportant, a mere
> uneventful transition period between objective reality and subjective
> perception of it. Because they have preconceived ideas of its
> unimportance they don¹t seek to find out if it¹s in any way different
> from their intellectual conception of it.² 

I would have chosen an even more salient quote, but it's plain that it's 
the intellectual (as-SOM) people  who most strongly hinder the MOQ 
to escape intellect's (the level) to establish a MOQ meta-level above 
the static range. And why Pirsig himself is the big block here is a 
tragedy.    

> Ok, time for a little Pirsig bang¹n. My first thought upon this reading
> of ³squareness..immunizedSbroken the habit?² was, ³Pure bullshit!² 
 
> If this timeline: <http://www.psybertron.org/timeline.html> is fairly
> accurate of his ³just drifting² period of 13 years (from 1946 (age17)
> to 1959 (age 30) ) over half of it, some portion of nearly 8 years, was
> spent in some form of ³formal [intellectual] training² leading to a BA
> in philosophy and a MA in journalism. This is followed by 3 more years
> of frantic intellectual spinnings while teaching in Bozeman, then
> Chicago, while pursuing a higher degree in philosophy.  IMHO it is not
> a stretch to view ZaMM as a Zen parable recounting the real dangers of
> an intellect run amok. 

> But he knows it! After the last instance of ³intellectual² in ZaMM he
> says, ³The organization of the reason itself defeats the quality.
> Everything he has been doing has been a fool¹s mission to begin with.²
 
> Does he abandon the ³fools mission?² No. Jump shift from the undefined
> Quality-Romantic/Classic split of ZaMM, add another 15 years of
> grinding intellect to Lila. Low and behold what do we find positioned
> near the top of the heap, just a dynamic blink away from pure Quality?
> The intellectual level!  

What you mean about intellect "a dynamic blink away from pure 
Quality" I'm not sure, but generally I beg to differ. Pirsig's reading, 
thinking and writing is not intellectual in SOM's own - internal - 
definition, it's a new way of thinking  which sees intellect as a SOM 
that has hypnotized Western culture into believing that the term 
"intellect" means thinking, while seen in its proper Q-role it is  the S/O 
mode of thinking.   

> Was there any doubt that many attracted to ZaMM¹s MoQ-1 would feel
> betrayed? I think to some degree much of conflict we see here is
> between those who are more romantically biased vs those who are more
> classically biased.

I for one was neither romantic nor classic, I was just sick and tired of 
SOM (that I knew as the mind/matter chasm) and was elated by the 
prospect - nay, revelation - that SOM was a fall-out of some greater 
system. No longer reality itself. 

But here some terribly important point must be made, namely the 
pesky QUALITY that sits at the top in the "moq" diagram and REALITY 
in the "som" one. SOM postulates one subjective and one objective 
reality, full stop! MOQ's revolution is postulating something that SOM 
is a product of, thus the diagram should have been vertical with Quality 
(DQ) on top and SOM as its sole (static) "fall-out"  ... at that stage.    

> In ZaMM after elevating quality to the basis of all reality his split
> into Classic and Romantic elevated the ³Arts² that were formerly
> orphaned in relatively minor ³subjective² philosophic branches onto
> equal footing with the Classic (intellectual/scientific) branch. As we
> move on to the MoQ-2 of Lila we are hard pressed to figure out where
> the Romantic and the ³Arts² went.  

Art being orphaned is due to the impossible intellectual level that LILA 
introduced identical to SOM's "mind" (in a Q guise) and if the MOQ is 
an intellectual-as-mind pattern it has become a mere subjective theory 
...now about Quality in as thin a Q guise as SOM's objective reality. 
The fact that SOM perfunctory is made another intellectual pattern 
changes nothing, we have a Q-SOM. 

> The "code of art" comment is just not very enlightening. If we were to
> use the MoQ-1 of ZaMM as a guide to classify Pirsig¹s two books, I
> think most of us would place ZaMM in the romantic sphere while Lila
> would be in the classic. [END BANG] 
 
If the MOQ had been preserved as intended in ZAMM with its 4th. 
level as the value of the S/O distinction all would have been fine. Art 
along with other un-assilimilable phenomena - beauty, intuition,  ... you 
will remember how many "ersatz" suggestions there have been) would 
have been gathered in under Quality as the mother of them all.,   

> But, of course my take on the story of the intellect/intellectual is
> just getting started. (to be continued) 

I'm bracing for it ;-)

> PS: I heard that a digital copy of Lila is floating around if someone
> could send it to me privately I sure would be appreciative.

Have you received any?

Bodvar