[MD] Intellectual activity

[Arlo Bensinger]

Scott, Platt, Steve, All,

At the risk of forcing a backup, let me interject some thoughts...

The problem with Pirsig's use of "intellectual" is that he uses it to 
confer both the natural, emergentist "higher" moral level arising from 
collective social activity, and on the other uses it to confer someone 
trapped within an "SOMist" objective, amoral, observer perspective. This is 
a carryover from ZMM, where "technologists" were the amoral, rational 
people who had closed the door on the aesthetic. "Intellectual", then, is 
used both as a perjorative (to describe SOMist thinking) and as a moral 
level above social patterns.

A "true" intellectual (I'm guessing) would be responsive to Quality in the 
way of an artist, sculptor or sophist. While an "intellectual" (in scare 
quotes) would be someone who is falsely approaching the world through the 
illusion of SOMist dettachment. At present, if we believe Pirsig, our 
culture is mostly operating under this SOMist paradigm, and hence 
"intellectual activity" is largely not fulfilling its moral role. This is a 
general statement, of course, because there are "intellectuals" who operate 
outside this paradigm (such as Pirsig).

That said, I see "Intellectual activity" as the participation in collective 
dialogue aimed at creating, manipulating and sustaining "intellectual 
patterns", which are symbolic-metaphorical representations of experience.

Fiction or non-fiction are absent in this description, as both may or may 
not at times involve "intellectual activity". Symbolic-metaphorical 
representations may involve a painting, or a treatise on mathematics.

What are we doing when we read Lila? We are participating in this 
collective dialogue. As such, it is an "intellectual activity". What do we 
do when we examine a Cezanne? We are participating in this dialogue. As 
such it is an "intellectual activity".

This agrees with Scott's assessment that "intellectual activity is not just 
the collection and manipulation of symbols, it is also the creation and 
modification of symbols", however it adds two extensions. One recognizes 
that the activity is dialogic historically, and the second that it is 
purposeful towards particular representative patterns, a sort of 
"meta-activity" where one is not describing and examining "experience", but 
one is describing and examining the symbols and metaphors by which we make 
sense of experience. Language can be social, or "phatic", with purposeful 
behavior towards establishing and maintaining "social patterns". But here 
the emphasis is on the willful examination of symbolic-metaphorical 
patterns, and not so much the taxonomic-level activity.

One is, I'd argue, engaged in "intellectual activity" when one reports 
Einstein's findings. That one has not created or manipulated symbols is 
irrelevant. But one does become a willful participant in the historical 
dialogue directed at the examination of the symbolic-metaphorical patterns 
used to describe culture.

What paradigm one brings to one's participation in this dialogue is the 
critical point of Lila.

But I think, just to be clear here, we need to remember that Pirsig's 
condemnation of the SOMist underpinnings of "intellectual activity" in 
modern society is not limited to "leftists" or "college professors". The 
same inherent flaw lies in the "intellectual activity" of those arguing 
"from the right". Meaning, you can't condemn one professor using the 
perjorative "intellectual" (implying their SOMist flaw), while supporting 
another whom happens to advance a political ideology you agree with. It's 
not just the "leftists" that are mislead by an SOMist paradigm, its the 
"rightists" too. We have to be careful (and this is for you, Platt, mi 
amigo), not to draw artificial boundaries that align SOM and non-SOM with 
modern political parties. Both Marx and Rand were "SOMist intellectuals", 
and should be critically examined as such.

Arlo