[MD] Food for Thought

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt]
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.

[Arlo]
Are you suggesting criminals "inhabit the intellectual level"? What Pirsig was
saying was that ALL humans are sources of ideas, and therefore should not be
killed unless they pose a direct threat to society. You, on the other hand,
specifically said "some people inhabit the social level" and "some people
inhabit the intellectual level". Then you said the "brujo" was an example of
someone who "inhabits the intellectual level". I can't find anything
"intellectual" about the brujo. All I see is social craftiness.

Maybe you are suggesting that determining who "inhabits the intellectual level"
is done after the fact. Since the brujo ushered in social change, we say he
"inhabited the intellectual level". Sorry if this makes no sense to me.

[Platt]
Your "ongoing mistake" is to associate the social level with every level as if
there were are societies or collectives of electrons and cells.

[Arlo]
Not a mistake. Basic MOQ 101. 

Every level contains "individual patterns". Can you name one that does not? 

>From the collective activity of those individual patterns, the next higher level
emerges? Can you name one level that does not arise from the collective
activity of individuals on the level below it? 

[Platt]
Pirsig clearly states that the social and intellectual levels in the MOQ are
reserved exclusively for humans.. 

[Arlo]
And although I disagree with him, it does not change the emergentist nature of
his MOQ. Social patterns emerge from collective activity of biological
individuals. Intellectual patterns from the collective activity fo social
individuals. It is a straightforward understanding of how the MOQ levels came
to be. 

[Platt]
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.

[Arlo]
So the MOQ levels are personality descriptors? 

[Platt]
I believe the law of gravity is attributable to Newton and the history of free
speech cites John Milton as a catalyst.

[Arlo]
The "law of gravity", and free speech, is attributable to the mythos, which
functions as individuals work collectively. 

[Platt]
As for political agenda, I find nothing in Pirsig to justify collective
squelching of individual liberty.

[Arlo]
And yet you use the MOQ to justify forcing others at the barrel of a gun to wear
tops or not wear veils. Interesting.

[Platt]
What you continue to ignore is Pirsig's assertion that in evolutionary change,
"someone has to be first." 

[Arlo]
Who was the first person who solved Fermat's Last Theorum? You don't know do
you? Neither do I? In fact, no one does. Because if someone did it "first"
makes no difference whatsoever if it is not latched and moved into the
collective mythos. BOTH the individual and her collective activity bring us
"evolutionary change".