[MD] Transhumanism

[skutvik at online.no]

Andre

Bodvar before:
> > ...there is an authority that directs police and that is the LAW and the
> > law rests on our "cause/not our cause" distinction. 

Andre:
> If by 'cause' in this context you mean 'the preservation of 'our' (i.e. a
> culture's definition of) the 'good', I have no argument with you.

A welcome break .

Bodvar before :
> > But over to the intellectual level's immune system where Pirsig refers
> > to psychiatry and its effort to try to convert him (in its time) "back
> > to objective reality" (LILA page 335) Is there a better indication that
> > he sees intellect as the S/O distinction (the value of telling what's 
> > objective and from what's subjective?

Andre:
> Yes Bodvar, the SOM pattern to the hilt! But read on a bit and Phaedrus
> says:

    "But he saw that they were representatives of the culture and 
    they were always required to deal with insanity as cultural 
    representatives" (LILA)   

> Do you read properly Bodvar: Phaedrus is not saying universal
> representatives of the universally recognised intellect as SOM. He is
> talking about cultural intellectual patterns.

He starts by saying that intellect is SOM", but trust Pirsig to nullify this 
viable interpretation and go over to some strange "cultural intellect" 
that covers every opinion held by man since time immemorial, long 
before the 4th. LEVEL is supposed to have emerged.  

Andre:
> Read a little before your quote:

    "But with a Metaphysics of Quality the empirical reality is not an 
    experience of 'objects'. It's an experience of value patterns 
    produced by a number of sources, not just inorganic patterns 
    (LILA).  

Yes, I know that the the MOQ is a break with SOM, had you just 
understood it.

    "When an insane person-or a hypnotized person or a person 
    from a primitive culture- advances some explanation of the 
    universe that is completely at odds with current scientific 
    reality, we do not have to believe he has jumped off the end of 
    the empirical world. He is just a person who is VALUING 
    INTELLECTUAL PATTERNS that, because they are OUTSIDE 
    THE RANGE OF OUR OWN CULTURE we perceive to have 
    very low quality.....(LILA) 

Pirsig can be most un-moqish at times. A person "from a primitive 
culture" is a person "from the social level" and he/she is hardly 
declared insane or anything, only declared ..well ...just primitive! This 
by Pirsig is a return to SOM where "culture" is the ordering matrix, the 
MOQ's ordering  matrix is the level. The said person doesn't value 
intellect because he is on the social level.           

    ".....It has caused him to filter out WHAT WE CALL OUR 
    NORMAL CULTURAL INTELLECTUAL PATTERNS just as 
    ruthlessly as our culture filters out his'. (my emphasis) (LILA)  

See, how the "normal cultural" secures total non-understanding.  Had 
he written: 

    "his (the person from a primtive culture) social focus has 
    caused him to filter out intellectual value as ruthlessly as 
    intellect filters out the MOQ" (a improved version) 

the inter-level struggle (social vs intellect) context would have 
emerged, as would  intellect's S/O role ... and finally MOQ's true role.    

> If this, for the zillionth time, is not a denial of your SOL/SOM argument
> and a confirmation of your 'attitude' towards other culture's intellectual
> patterns I don't know what is.

Yes, it is a denial of the intellect=SOM (SOL) and consequently  
robbing the MOQ of its explanatory power. The opening about 
psychiatry and insanity as intellect's "immune apparatus" is most 
revealing. There were/is no mental illness in the social reality. People 
may be "crazy" due to evil spirits, obsessed by the devil, spells being 
cast ...etc.  only with intellect's march forward in Europe did 
abnormality become a subject mind having lost touch with objective 
reality. This really casts a new light on insanity, but Pirsig makes it 
sound as if  "insanity and psychiatry" has been around always.    

> I would never 'fit' the Chinese Red Guard Bodvar. I have seen them up
> close;they are like robots and I do hope you do not see me in that way.

They were just as "exasperated" over those who did not agree with 
Mao's interpretation of communism as you over me not agreeing with 
(all of) Pirsig's interpretation of the MOQ.    


Bodvar