[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[Khoo Hock Aun]

Hi Dave and Mary,

I hope you do not mind my intervention, at this point, on a point perhaps 10
years after the fact.

The contention that the intellectual level arose, alone with the Greeks,
from an Oriental/Eastern position is absolutely laughable, if one if
familiar with the complex philosophies that developed in India and China.
Any one making that assertion would not be taken seriously in this side of
the world. In my readings of ZAMM and LILA, I did not get the impression
that Pirsig took such a position. Alarm bells in my head would have gone on
otherwise.

The impression that I got from both books is that Western Civilisation as we
know it today, underpinned by social and technological advances based on
science/ subject-object dualism  had its roots in the original Greek
philosophies of Aristole, Plato and Socrates. True, this civilisation is
technically and materially the most advanced in the world today, dominant
and all-pervasive. It is easy to fall into the conception that the intellect
of the West is all there is and there ever will be.

This in no way detracts from the assertion, that I believe Pirsig makes, in
that as societies evolve, an intellectual level emerges, irrrespective of
the context and geographical location, whether in tandem with other
civilisations or in isolation. The value in this is that intellect now leads
evolutionary development, rather than social drivers. The ongoing debate in
this list, is what constitutes the intellectual level; some assert it to be
the subject-object divide, logic itself and  some, Pirsig himself asserts,
symbol manipulation, some assert it to be more, but the net effect,
whichever is the same - the conception of ideas and acting to manifest those
ideas in the world around us. India and China too had their versions of
subject object logic within their respective philopsophies but this did
not to drive and dominate the development of society as in the West.
Perhaps, the emphasis of the community over the individual arrested this
tendency and what you call the "ego" is not a central character in the play.


In reference to the above, in China at least, the idea of "harmony" was
paramount, within the family, society and the universe, earth and heaven so
to speak. Harmony does not mean a "static equilibrium" here, but more like a
"dynamic balance" which may be connoted by the ying-yang symbol. Nothing in
the Chinese world view is ever static. Everything is in flux driven by
diametrically opposing forces around a central pivot. From this evolves the
idea the Doctrine of the Mean which forms the basis of an Eastern
Intellectual level. I think Bo thinks this, together with its Indian
counterpart, to be a half-baked Subject-Object Metaphysics, only because
perhaps it has not been institutionalised and expressed in the technical
splendor found in the West. It may be "half baked" to Bo, but it does  bring
with it the "technological alienation" that Pirsig describes.

On the contrary, China's intelletual development was as advanced as could
be, at one time, producing through its examination system the best scholars
and minds to manage and empire, and a host of technical advances to which
the west still owes a debt. For the lack of a patent system, no one
individual could claim ownership over ideas, and hence none of the
commercial development that could come with it. Lets fast forward to the
21st century and telescope a whole century of developments from communism,
globalisation to the electronic age. The values that hold the Middle Kingdom
together and its diaspora are still intact, and its intelletual level has
assimilated and continues to assimilate technology at the expense of the
West. China has experimented with Western intellectual such as socialism and
capitalism and discarded those parts, perhaps momentarily, it could not use
- like the ballot box.

Dave, what I am trying to say, or rather ask is, can you build a bridge from
one side only ? A bridge from East to West or West to East has to be firmly
built on foundations in both East and West. For a long while there was no
idea that the East is important. And I can understand that. The East, Japan
and Korea primarily have been assiimilating  a whole lot Western cultural
and technological attributes, but has the West understood the basic building
blocks of Eastern philosophy and civilisation for a foundation for a bridge
to be built? Elsewhere I read, its only been about philology.

Mary, bridge building aside, or even trying to come to a better
understanding of Buddhism, Pirsig was trying to address the deficiencies in
Western civilisation and the negative results that its amoral SOM-dominated
intellectual level has brought about, and in my view, in its imposition on
a vulnerable Eastern civilisation that may not have built the necessary
instruments for a proper check and balance.

Best regards
Khoo Hock Aun






On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 11:24 AM, David Thomas <
combinedefforts at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Mary,
> > Can you guess where this is going? :)
> Yes, absolutely.  I read your other post to Khoo already and in general
> agree. ZaMM, in part, is a tale of what can happen when an Ego is wounded
> early and often.
>
> > It is a profoundly Western idea to say that Orientals (or Indians or
> > Eskimos) are evolutionarily inferior if they lack our Greek intellectual
> > inheritance.  Where did Pirsig ever say that?  He didn't.
>
> I agree he did not. But he did point initially to the Greeks as the source
> of SOM and SINGLE SOURCE of the emergence of the intellectual level. Later
> he wobbled on that in some comment somewhere I recall but did not clearly
> dismiss his single source claim. Many people, Bo in particular, have
> pounded
> on that "Greeks and Greeks only" intellectual emergence drum, forever. I
> and
> others have pointed out the CONSEQUENCES of PIRSIG'S claim over and over to
> no avail.
> > Kidding aside, the Intellectual Level is a STATIC Level.
> You pointed out (I think, but I may be wrong) that you prefer MoValue to
> Quality. I prefer stable to static. Pirsig uses both synonymously but
> static
> implies more rigidity to me, not as plastic. I prefer saying the
> intellectual level is the most dynamic, but it is also the most unstable.
>
> Dave
>
>
>
>
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