[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Dave Thomas (dee tee)  

25 Jan. :

> No need to be modest Bo you have been straight forward and honest about
> your goal for years. To correct what you believe to a fatal flaw in
> Pirsig's work. If you are successful this will as you say at the end of
> your SOL essay it will," ... make .. my legacy." (you may be right see
> below) 

Again ...thanks 

    [quotes from Turner letter]  The question you raise about the 
    intellectual level has troubled me too. When I answered Dan 
    Glover in Lila's Child, I remember being a little annoyed that 
    anyone should ask what the intellectual level is-as though he 
    were asking me what I mean by the word, "the."  

> The following refer to the call by RMP to limit the social level to
> human social.   

    I think the same happens to the term, "intellectual," when one    
    extends it much before the Ancient Greeks.* If one extends the    
    term intellectual to include primitive cultures just because they    
    are thinking about things, why stop there? How about  
    chimpanzees? Don't they think? How about earthworms? Don't 
    they make conscious decisions? How about bacteria 
    responding   

Bo's conclusion from this 
> > "Ancient Greeks" means SOM in a MOQ context, ipso facto!
 
DT
> Bullshito facto

How come, Pirsig points to the absurdity of using the term "social" 
below the social LEVEL and that "the same happens" if intellect is 
used below the intellectual LEVEL and that he says is "the Greeks" - 
i.e. SOM - in the West (in the Orient something else). His refutation of 
the "thinking" intellect became a bit too much by and by. Earthworms 
and atoms ...!!!   

> Thank you for digging this out and posting it. Khoo asked and I
> couldn't remember where it came from or exactly what it said. I think
> what we have here is you practicing "Phadreus reading." That method of
> reading by which you only skim only looking for those points that might
> be construed to support your argument. Overlooking all else.

Can't it be that I intuitively perceived the QUALITY IDEA and wince at 
arguments that violates it and applauds those that support it - the 
Quality  Idea  - not Bo's "argument"? I know this can show streaks of 
megalomania   ... yet    
 
> Could not, and should not the phase "when one extends it to much
> before" be left to mean just what it implies: the emergence of the
> intellectual level should probably be limited to a period of time not
> much before Ancient Greeks which history refers to as the Axial Age.
> Your selective reading and myopic perspective warps a general period of
> time into a specific place, time and philosophy. Not what Pirsig is
> saying here and not what Pirsig is saying on the pages of Lila I asked
> you to reread this morning. 

All thinkers worth their pay agree about the known period as a 
profound shift, but exactly what happened is unclear? Most often it is 
the political move from despotism to democracy, the budding science, 
Aristotle's academical ordering into various faculties ...etc. If you 
remember Scott Roberts' Owen Barfield obsession and his 
Participation" scheme. The ancient era = original P, the Greeks = the 
destruction of P. Sometime in the future the resumption of P. This 
closely is resembles ZAMM's Aretê = original Quality, SOM = 
destruction of Quality and the MOQ = resumption of Quality. The Axial  
Age I'm not familiar with, but by all means. What I want is to make 
Pirsig (and you all) to come to your senses a see what phenomenal 
system  he has conceived by setting "the Greeks" in a context that 
turns circles around all other systems. But in the MOQ then Greeks 
(SOM) must be the 4th. level and the MOQ must be beyond its static 
range for it to be revolution.  

> However I still to stand by the claim that you still have an
> opportunity to build a legacy with your position. If your claim that
> the intellectual level only emerged in Ancient Greece and the sole
> occupant of the intellectual level is SOM, then indeed you will have a
> legacy. That legacy will be as the man who sharpened the stake driven
> into the heart of the MoQ that killed it from ever becoming a plan for
> the bridge between Eastern and Western philosophy. (Read Khoo's post
> for a hint)

Ancient Greece as the sole site of the 4th level is no dogma with me, I 
believe the Oriental Uphanisadic period spelt a 4th. level effort, but 
what is crucial is that the 4th level as the subject/object distinction. I 
don't think you Dave to be "low and immoral" but the watering down of 
the intellectual level into something I don't know what is, and suspect 
you to be as confused about, means the death of the MOQ. It must be 
SOM or the SOM prevails, THATS FOR SURE!!!.

Thanks for the interest

Bodvar