[MD] Re Proposed solution to SOL/Intellectual level

[Andre Broersen]

Hi All
In my post to Ron I made one and other clear based on my reading of
Northrop. Reflecting on what I said I came to the conclusion that I
hadn't been 'radical' enough. Language, words we use, are social
PoV's. They do not operate outside the DQ/SQ configuration. They are a
fundamental part of it.
To suggest that words are something else to what they denote is to
fall victim to symbolism and makes a mockery of this social PoV.

Why, for example does the MoQ avoid, nee refuses to use the term 'God'?
Because it has low quality connotations and associations and does not
accurately represent Quality.

Why does the MoQ do away with words such as 'substance',
'cause-and-effect' and replaces them with 'patterns' and 'preferences'
? Because these reflect the relationships in the levels more
accurately.
The MoQ means what it claims and it is the most profound claim ever made!

Why this distortion of words and their meaning? Why suggest that words
are analogies? Within the MoQ perspective they are not.
I think it may be the SOM legacy that has made such a mess of things.
Confused things so much that we do not know whether we are coming or
going. Part of this confusion is outlined in both ZMM and LILA and
which I tried to make clear to Ron.

An event happens...direct experience...but we have to wait for the
written reports to appear ( plus a recommendation to visit the shrink
umpteen times) to be told what 'really' happened. And that what we do
find in these reports are SOM interpretations. So called factual, so
called, scientific, so called independent and so called objective.
Words in the service of S/O intellect.

A social PoV has become the plaything of intellect. The way poor
Phaedrus was torn to bits by Socrates. When this happens you can see
that the higher level pattern rips the lower level pattern out of its
context...resulting in deletion, distortion and generalisation...plus
a host of other things that gave 'life' to the pattern at which level
it originated.

This SOM pattern as Intellect, this scientific understanding of
reality was 'fathered' by Aristotle. It was around this time it was
born. I argue that it was still- born ( no offence intended to anyone
who has ever experienced such a tragedy). It lay in suspended
animation for centuries and was only used by the Christian Church to
further their own cause ( e.g. Thomas Aquinas) and to make the
Christian doctrine at least a little more 'truth- acceptable, to be
founded upon scientific Platonic/Aristotelian doctrines, to give it
credence and the power to wield this 'evidence' to the contrary during
the Terror of the Spanish Inquisition.

Come Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Descartes, Newton, Locke etc
etc. Aristotle's scientific doctrine is resurrected. (Still fear of
the Church with whom it has now close ties).

Pirsig argues that this pattern, now slightly modified to accomodate
new discoveries and especially Descrates, was actively employed to
dominate society on Nov. 11, 1919. Armistice Day. By then SOM had
developed into a full- fledged adolescent however, with no 'modern'
social experience. (it came from Greek culture, through the Dark Ages
and ended up being employed at the start of the twentieth century. It
got the job of managing a system it was never trained for. It never
completed its apprenticeship (it could be argued it is doing it now!).

It had no idea what it was confronted with- the connection between it
and its parent level had been severed many, many centuries before.
They were strangers to one another. It went off on a tangent of its
own, creating neologisms left, right and centre to bridge the
unavoidable and unfatomable gap...to no avail. ZMM discusses this
beautifully.

Words, as social PoV's became empty and this is why there is unrest,
in the West at the social level which expresses itself in the crisis
of Democracy, crises in Education, crises in the Health and Welfare
sector, the Economic sector... everywhere. A rust-belt Pirsig tems it,
and he is right.

I began wandering about the birth of this pattern. I believe it can be
argued, based on my own piddly effort and Pirsig's insight that this
scientific understanding has not fully emerged into the intellectual
level as MoQ level. Pirsig asks, rightly, is science, in fact,
independent of society ..and answers not at all. Aristotelian science
and its developments are in fact not separate from society at all. It
is a farce to suggest otherwise.

This makes for an opening: if that is indeed the case (as the MoQ
argues) then I argue that the SOL, the subject/ object distinction is
a dominant Western CULTURAL pattern, a combination of social and
intellectual values meshed together.

It hinges between the social and the intellectual. The SOL is a
cultural pattern of value.

 This clears up a few things: it accounts for differing cultural
integrations of the two ( e.g. Pirsig's difference between one
importance in Germany and crossing the border into France the
importance is lost).

It accounts for a different CULTURAL development in the Orient.

It explains Pirsig's definition in the letter to Paul Turner.
...manipulation of symbols (and words are not symbols!!) that have no
direct...etc. and makes this fit in with the proposed view.

That is the intellectual level proper. Pure symbol manipulation
without social pattern words. It overcomes the 'suspended in language'
thing though that challenge, that 'sales- trick' still remains.

Now we have the MoQ. We have DQ/SQ. Let this social PoV come to its
own again within the DQ/SQ configuration (a language used is a
'living' language).

DQ/SQ=Reality. What else does it refer to? Concepts, abstractions,
analogies? Christ allmighty. Before the MoQ I had a girlfriend- now,
with the MoQ I have an analogy pointing to a girlfriend. I have
nothing but a concept in my own arms sometimes! Ridiculous!

The words Pirsig uses are social PoV's with precise meanings. He is
very fussy about them as the LC annotations show.

I am with Bodvar on this one...not sure if he is with me after this post!!

I have the menu and have been consuming some very sumptuous meals thank you!

I know there are holes in this. At places I have short-circuited
things. Please consider this as a constructive suggestion only. I
respect the intellectual efforts of Bodvar and Mr. Pirsig.

I suggest that this may get us closer to a 'solution' realising that
all is provisional and no Papal Bull.

Time for my electric blanket.

Good night
Andre