[MD] Food for Thought

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

Platt,

First to your comment that the brujo of Pirsig's story "inhabits the
intellectual level". That the brujo was a catalyst for social change is not
doubted, that he was an instrument for DQ I'd also agree, but he was NOT a
force for "intellectual Quality". He was a drunkard and a peeping tom, and his
"contribution" was to recognize the greater social power that would destroy his
tribe if they refused to conform.

Your ongoing mistake, to associate the "social" level with "collectives" and the
"intellectual" level with "individuals" completely ignores the MOQ which
clearly demonstrates that there are "individuals" on ALL levels of the MOQ, and
from the collective activity of those individuals, the next higher level
emerges.

But what you do below is place "people" on those levels. "Ninety-nine percent of
the populace are conformist second-handers inhabiting the social level...
creative thinkers - the brujos of the world -- who inhabit the intellectual
level..." (and presumably there are people who inhabit the biological level...
are there people who inhabit the inorganic level???). All this does is make the
MOQ levels "descriptors of people".

Never mind the fact that what Pirsig identifies as individual "intellectual
patterns", things like the Law of Gravity, Free Speech, etc., are the result of
the collective activity of social individuals. Just as those individual social
patterns are the result of the collective activity of biological individuals.
You are dismantling the MOQ to make it fit a political agenda.

Finally, according to basic MOQ functionality, individual intellectual patterns
also behave collectively, and from this collective behavior the next level up,
whatever that might be, will emerge. To suggest no other layers will emerge is
just like Pirsig says, two cells wondering if there will ever be anything
greater than them.