[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

Hola Ian ku`u hoaaloha,

[Ian]
Omigawd - Platt you have surpassed yourself on this one.

[Arlo]
It's fun, no? :-)

[Ian]
Where to start ? With contempt perhaps.
Or no, hang on a moment - maybe THIS is Platt being ironic - whaddya think?

[Arlo]
I actually thought this. Platt hates Arlo, and so Platt is just trying to drive
Arlo crazy. But methinks not. I think you're witnessing the lengths a person
will go to subvert anything and everything to a very narrow political agenda.

We are getting close to a fundamentalist read of Genesis here. It is not only
that "man" is "superior" to the animals in "degree", man must be superior by
virtue of a Divine Blessing.

In the amoeba segment of ZMM, Pirsig also writes.

"If it had a nervous system it would act in a much more complex way to overcome
the poor quality of the environment. It would seek analogues, that is, images
and symbols from its previous experience, to define the unpleasant nature of
its new environment and thus 'understand' it.

In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms respond to our
environment with an invention of many marvelous analogues. We invent earth and
heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, language, philosophy,
engineering, civilization and science. We call these analogues reality. And
they are reality. We mesmerize our children in the name of truth into knowing
that they are reality. We throw anyone who does not accept these analogues into
an insane asylum. But that which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality.
Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create
the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it."

The difference between the amoeba pulling away from the acid, and the person
jumping off the hot stove, BOTH response to Dynamic Quality, is in the static
analogues we are able to invent following the experience. Amoebas don't create
earth and heavens, etc. (so far as we know, I suppose). People do. (And chimps
are somewhere in between).

But this is a "gradation". And fundo-neocons hates gradations. People can't just
be "higher on a scale", they must be Divine Beings Who Exist Off the Scale!
Man, Wonderous Man, solely upon whom DQ-God has bestowed it's Divine Gift. Man,
Wonderous Man, alone in the Cosmos responding to DQ, while all of God's other
creations, inferior creations, can do nothing more but predictable behavior and
automatism.

Arlo