[MD] The Greeks?

[Mary]

Hi Andre (& Steve),


On Behalf Of Andre Broersen
> Sent: Sunday, June 06, 2010 12:44 AM
> Mary to Steve:
> 
> What's left that could expand the Intellectual Level to something
> greater
> than SOM?
> 
> Andre:
> Hi Mary, Steve. Rationality is of course part of the intellectual level
> and Mr. Pirsig describes this as a traditional, conventional
> rationality. ZMM is about Phaedrus' quest and his endeavour at arguing
> for a 'root expansion' of rationality. I think that the MOQ IS this
> 'root expansion' and since the MOQ is an intellectual pattern of value
> this expansion is also part of the intellectual level.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
Each level germinates in the one below then takes off on purposes of its
own.  It seeks to dominate the patterns valued by the level below.  These
things we know.  In chapter 29 or so of ZMM, Pirsig explains the birth of
the Intellectual Level as the period when arête was demoted from an
overarching sense of undefined DQ to a definable set of logical rules.  He
said this was partly a good thing and partly not.  On one hand, had this not
happened, the technological revolution later to come could not have been,
but on the other he saw the deadly isolation and malaise the denial of DQ
would cause mankind to suffer.  I suppose for all things there is a price.

The only way DQ can be defined is by demoting it.  As the fundamental
reality of the world, it can never be defined by the intellect, only
experienced pre-intellectually.  The moment one is aware of DQ it ceases to
be DQ and becomes SQ.  This, Pirsig sees as the fundamental transformation
of reality.  DQ -> SQ.  

Since DQ is prior to awareness it is easy to deny its existence.  But if you
do that, you have to account for Quality somehow.  Why do we instantly
recognize that some things are better than others?  The answer was that the
Quality doesn't have the thing, the thing has the Quality.  Once you've said
that, the next step is to define what Quality is.  Create rules that
everyone can agree on. 

The transformation of DQ into SQ is not a split.  It is not a wielding of
the analytical knife, but a transformation.  The use of the knife comes
later.  In the instant you become aware of DQ it is transformed to SQ.  It
is only SQ the mind can work with, having experiences and assigning meaning.
It is here the analytical knife is wielded.  If you do not believe that all
things, including yourself, originate with DQ, you are driven to the
conclusion that there are only two things in the Universe.  You and not-you.
You the 'subject' and everything else not-you, the 'object'.  You are the
center of your own private Universe.  Without acknowledgement of DQ this
conclusion is inescapable.   You become the measure of all things, bestowing
the attributes of Quality and Value upon all you survey.  There is great
power but also great isolation.  

Once you have chosen to wield the analytical knife by dividing SQ into
subjects and objects your course is set and cannot be altered.  All else
follows, from the questions you choose to ask to the choices you choose to
make.  It is the guiding principle of your life - so fundamental to your
awareness that you are unaware you are doing it.  It is supremely seductive
in the power you seem to possess, but profoundly isolating and ultimately
dissatisfying, because you are not experiencing DQ, you are only bestowing
your own lesser form of it.  It is the malaise of the West about which
Pirsig spoke.
  
 
> (This is a view rejected by Bodvar who refuses to acknowledge that the
> MOQ is an intellectual pattern of value and to argue the nonsense that
> the MOQ is out of SOM and his own warped understanding then
> necessitates the MOQ 'emerging' from SOM and heralding a new level).
> 
[Mary Replies] 
The MoQ is an intellectual idea.  Spawned in the mind of a man as steeped in
SOM as any; but, as with all that is new, we must ask what it values and
decide whether that agrees in value with the level from which it sprang.  

> 'Phaedrus spent his entire life pursuing a ghost. That was true. The
> ghost he pursued was the ghost that underlies all of technology, all of
> modern science, all of Western thought. It was the ghost of rationality
> itself'.
> 
> 
> '...the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient
> times,
> is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really
> is...emotionally hollow, aesthtically meaningless and spiritually
> empty'.
> 
> 'So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem
> isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of
> rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution'.
> 
> 'We're living in topsy-turvy times, and I think that what causes the
> topsy-turvy feeling is inadequacy of old forms of thought to deal with
> new experiences. I've heard it said that the only real learning results
> from hang-ups, where instead of expanding the branches of what you
> already know, you have to stop and drift laterally for a while until
> you
> come across something that allows you to expand the roots of what you
> already know.Everyone's familiar with that. I think the same thing
> occurs with whole organizations when expansion is needed at the roots'.
> 
> 'Now I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be
> tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the
> formal recognition of Quality in its operation'.
> 
> So I would suggest Mary that the MOQ is the expansion of the
> Intellectual Level that is greater than SOM.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
I would suggest that the MoQ is a new idea that would defeat SOM and take
off on purposes of its own.

Best,
Mary

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