[MD] Food for Thought

[Platt Holden]

Arlo:

> 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.

The social moral character of an individual is irrelevant to his 
intellectual status in creating an idea in response to DQ that changes 
the course of history. As you know, Pirsig was against capital 
punishment for that reason. 

> 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.

Your "ongoing mistake" is to associate the social level with every 
level as if there were are societies or collectives of electrons and 
cells. Pirsig clearly states that the social and intellectual levels in 
the MOQ are reserved exclusively for humans.. 

> 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".

As you know, a person consists of all four levels. But no person 
inhabits one level or another exclusively. But as I said, the vast 
majority of people are dominated by social level values.
 
> 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.

I believe the law of gravity is attributable to Newton and the history 
of free speech cites John Milton as a catalyst.  As for political 
agenda, I find nothing in Pirsig to justify collective squelching of 
individual liberty. 

> 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.

I do not say other layers will not be created, but they will do so as a 
result of an individual responding to DQ. What you continue to ignore 
is Pirsig's assertion that in evolutionary change, "someone has to be 
first."