[MD] Re Proposed solution to SOL/Intellectual level

[skutvik at online.no]

Mary, Andre, All

Mary to Andre:
> But SOM needs symbol manipulation to exist, and Pirsig says symbol
> manipulation IS the Intellectual Level.  If we go with that, then SOM
> is contained within the Intellectual Level, but does not define it,
> thus disagreeing with Bo. 

BTW Mary, thanks for the photos from your trip with Kenny. Wow! 
Everything's grand in America, even the Norwegian mountains  and 
valleys can't compete this, we only have the "fjords" to show. 

Over to business. Pirsig is lost when called upon to define the 
4th.level, when he writes freely and follows the Quality scent he is spot 
on, as when he said that the social level weren't transcended in 
Homeric time something that make the emergence of SOM in ZAMM 
identical with the emergence of the 4th. level. Exhibit 1) 

Or else in LILA I could dig up many "exhibits" that points to the 
intellect=S/O interpretation, but that would be too tedious. In the same 
Turner letter Pirsig pointed to the futility of speaking about an 
intellectual level before the Greeks, and Greeks spells SOM. Exhibit 2) 
But trust Pirsig, to complete the confusion he went to a "non-S/O" 
Oriental intellectual level, something my antagonists uses to deny the 
SOL without which the MOQ is as revolutionary as old tea.

To return to the "symbol manipulation" that anyone will recognize as 
an intellectual definition of language, not a Quality definition of intellect. 
which is the S/O distinction. In language's case the "symbol/what's 
symbolized" DISTINCTION. Is it impossible to understand the 
upheaval that this distinction meant compared to the ancient social 
past that did not know it?        

Andre:
> Desparately running behind in my reactions Mary..apologies. You are
> correct and I am thankful that you and others have pointed to (and
> explained) my error. Perhaps my emotions got the better of me in terms
> of wanting to 'force' an integration of the SOL with the MoQ. It
> cannot be done. Intellect as part of the S/O aggregate is a Western
> cultural phenomenon.

"Intellect part of the S/O aggregate" what strange formulation. The 
intellectual level IS THE S/O distinction, all of it, every last bit! 

Mary:
> Why do you say you are "with Bodvar on this one"?
 
Andre:
> I have taken leave of Bodvar's position regarding the universality of
> intellect as the S/O logic.Or, for that matter, that S/O logic is the
> only pattern to have made it into the intellectual level. 

With this lead balloonish understanding of the SOL no wonder you 
"took leave". This sounds - applied to the 2nd. level -  as if there first  
were a biological level that  LIFE had to "make it into". The biological 
level and life are identical,  just as the intellectual level emerged when 
DQ prodded some dynamic social pattern to make the quantum jump 
to an OBJECTIVE attitude that looked back on the past and realized 
how subjective, gullible and bigot the past were. This you once 
understood Andre, why slip back into intellect's quagmire where 
"intellect" means a "mindish" - thinking - facility that have been around 
since the first brain formed. AKA the intelligence fallacy!       

> Or to turn this around, that the intellectual level only 'contains' S/O
> logic. Within the MoQ it doesn't make sense. The 'evidence' between the
> Oriental intellectual developments and (different) Western intellectual
> developments bear witness to this. 

For heaven's sake Andre, look and listen. Pirsig points to the Vedic 
god-centered era as the Oriental "social level", then the Upanishad era 
which was one of enormous philosophical quests and is the oriental 
intellectual level, because to philosophize IS to search for principles 
beyond the vedic god-reality, exactly as the Greeks! The Oriental 
"tragedy" or "luck" (erase what doesn't fit) is that this philosophical-
intellectual-foray did not develop into a SOM before they went on to a 
Quality-like stage - Buddhism/Taoism. This because the half-baked 
SOM posed no resistance to the Oriental jump to Buddhism. On the 
other hand, this left it all a woolly mess. The Western MOQ will be a 
better "Buddhism"!   

> That's why Mr. Pirsig doesn't understand Bodvar's conclusion and has
> little 'faith' in it..apart from a possible percolation- to --the- top
> effect....if it has value.

That is true! The trouble with Mr Pirsig is that he didn't see Buddhism 
as some stage beyond the Uphanishads' intellectual era rather its 
crowning point, hence his "non S/O Oriental intellect". Just as he sees 
the MOQ as the crowning point of the intellectual level (its topmost 
pattern) not as young Phaedrus correctly saw it that the Quality Idea 
had to liberate itself from SOM-as-intellect to become a new reality ... 
or fall back into SOM.   

> I am not suggesting that this clears up other matters but sometimes it
> is good to just step away from the MoQ sometimes, take a breath, just
> stare at the thing once in a while and refocus.

That is a good idea! I haven't given you up Andre, you have the 
material for understanding (endearing myself ;-)

> Thanks Mary, I enjoy your posts.
 
Ditto!

Bodvar