[MD] Distinguishing Levels

[Platt Holden]

Hi Steve, 

[Steve]
> What I've been saying is that our broad concepts do
> not fall neatly into the moq levels. To the extent
> that motherhood is a social role it does not include
> thinking though motherhood as a broad concept has its
> biological and intellectual aspects as well.
> 
> > [Steve]
> > > I think to understand the social level it is more
> > about understanding
> > > that ethos that is acepted without reasoning and
> > is perpetuated through
> > > unconscious copying. When we start to give reasons
> > for our rules we are
> > > getting into intellect. Sometimes such reasoning
> > is intellectual support
> > > for social patterns but the reasoning itself is
> > intellectual.
> 
> 
> Platt:
> > Agree. Reason is intellectual and individual.
> > Societies don't reason. 
> > All the more reason for identifying the intellectual
> > level as the 
> > individual level. :-)
> 
> I think you overestimate the extent to which reasoning
> is individual. At any rate, Pirsig defines an
> individual human being as a collection of patterns
> from all levels with the ability to respond to dynamic
> quality. Calling level 4 the individual level would be
> to put all the static levels plus dq in one level.
 
As you stated above, the levels are interdependent and include one 
another to one degree or another. Thus some individuals are dominated 
by biological values (terrorists), some by social values (socialists) 
and some by intellectual values (rational empiricists). I identify the 
levels like Pirsig does, by their dominance or subservience to levels 
below and above. Thus the individual level is dominated by rational 
empiricists who refuse to let social values determine their reality but 
rely instead in large part on personal experience and independent  
judgments. These are the "show me" contrarians who demand freedom from 
what "everybody thinks"and thus are the catalytic agents for 
evolutionary change -- like the brujo.

Platt