[MD] A Place for the Principled Person

[Case]

[Platt]
 
There may be other answers I'm not aware of which is the reason for  
this post, asking for your response. But, unless someone can come up  
with a convincing case to include the pattern of a principled person in  
a level as Pirsig defines them, or to include the pattern somewhere  in  
his definition of a person as consisting of all four levels plus  
ability to respond to DQ, then a change in naming and describing the  
intellectual level to the individual level might further be in order so  
as to include the pattern of a principled person as well as emphasize  
the ongoing battle for the dominance between the free individual  
intellect and collective conformity pressures.  
 
[Case]
I confess that I have not been following this aspect of this debate very
closely so if someone has mentioned this previously, I beg pardon:

Not withstanding my own oft stated reservations about it, in Pirsig's
hierarchy of values each level emerges from the level below it. A level can
not exist without the underlying level. One should conclude from this that
the intellectual level emerges from the social level and is discrete from
it. That would imply that ideas do not exist as such at the social level but
are an emergent property of it. Clearly social patterns from which no
intellectual level emerges are found in nature and have been talked about
here previously.

One pattern of values typical of all human societies is the development and
preservation of shared history. For the overwhelming majority of the human
sojourn on this planet shared history was preserved orally in the form of
myth and story. What Europeans encountered among the natives of North
American were prehistoric peoples. I think it is fair to say that the
patterns common among these peoples and other prehistoric peoples
encountered by literate societies across the globe is representative of how
collective memories were passed on from time immemorial.

The so called advances that have occurred in more recent times result from
technological developments such as written language and printing. These
advances increase the storage capacity of shared memory. Without them
complex ideas could not develop. The limited storage capacity of individuals
passing along ideas to one another by word of mouth restricts the expansion
of the intellectual level. I hasten to add that the intellectual level
existed in all human societies it was not "invent" by the Greek. They are
simply a historical marker for an expansion phase brought on by a wider use
of the Greek language, written and spoken, as spread throughout the world by
Alexander.

The rapid pace of intellectual development over the past few centuries is in
direct proportion to the expansion of collective memory. 

However much you value the intellectual seeds planted by histories giants
you must acknowledge that they are watered from and planted in, collective
soil.

The individual without access to shared memory does not partake of the
intellectual level at all. It simple does not exist for him. Further more
the "Principled individual" can only exist as a function of his
participation in the shared history of his people. What constitutes
principled behavior by one tribe may be grossly immoral in another. The
individual's actions and virtue can only be judged by his peers in the
context of their shared history. 

Check out James Clavel's "Shogun" or Gary Jenning's novels "Aztec" and
"Marco Polo" for fictional examples that are as entertaining as they are
enlightening.