[MD] Flying Spagetti Monsters

[Platt Holden]

Platt (previously)
> So the "collective consciousness of all mankind" is always at the 
> intellectual level while the collective state reflecting a national
> consciousness can never attain that level?

Arlo
> As to the above, I'd say the mythos is the collective sum of
> intellectual level patterns we use to make sense of the world.

Is the "collective consciousness of all mankind" the same as "the 
collective sum of intellectual patterns?"

 "You know
> something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define
> the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is
> what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It's an
> analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can't be anything
> else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known
> before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon
> analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating
> mankind. Every last bit of it. The Quality is the track that directs the
> train. What is outside the train, to either side...that is the terra
> incognita of the insane."
> 
> In his condemnation of SOM, Pirsig writes of the modern "mythos", "The
> mythos that says the forms of this world are real but the Quality of
> this world is unreal, that is insane!" Here  is a clear indication that
> the "mythos" represent the foundational intellectual level framework
> that informs our understanding of the world. The "mythos" arises, and
> evolves, through historical-dialectic activity of individuals in
> collective engagement.
> 
> Notice that the mythos is clearly dialectical in its emergence "the
> mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues" and in
> its reciprocal informative nature "the mythos that says the forms of
> this world are real". If that's not enough, consider Pirsig said this
> shortly thereafter, "the villains who had so shaped the mythos as to
> cause us to accept this insanity as reality", and also, "the ancient
> Greeks, whose mythos had endowed our culture with the tendency
> underlying all the evil of our technology, the tendency to do what is
> "reasonable" even when it isn't any good."

I agree that people's thoughts and methods of interpreting their 
experience is largely learned from the culture they happen to born to.. 
If that's not your point, please feel free to correct my summary. 

> The "state" or "nation" can, and often does, function in its moral role,
> checking biological quality while providing a greater level of freedom
> than existed on the biological level. However, its interests are only to
> itself, and like Pirsig describes in LILA about the Nazi regime, "it
> [the Holocaust] was a quality dictated by low level static social and
> biological patterns whose overall purpose was to retard the evolution of
> truth and Dynamic Quality." The same could be said of the Indian Wars,
> the Cambodian killing fields, the Inquisition or what is going on in
> Darfur or happened in Serbia.

I agree that violence is a biological pattern, but I'm not sure what 
Pirsig means by "low level static social patterns." What are high level 
static social patterns?  
 
> Its also wise to heed Pirsig's caution, in LILA, "This solution is to
> dissolve all static patterns, both sane and insane, and find the base of
> reality, Dynamic Quality, that is independent of all of them. The
> Metaphysics of Quality says that it is immoral for sane people to force
> cultural conformity by suppressing the Dynamic drives that produce
> insanity. Such suppression is a lower form of evolution trying to devour
> a higher one. Static social and intellectual patterns are only an
> intermediate level of evolution. They are good servants of the process
> of life but if allowed to turn into masters they destroy it."

That's why freedom as practiced in the U.S. and some other Western
countries is so important to preserve, protect and defend -- so DQ can 
flourish.

> Furthermore, that the "state" can behave immorally is evidenced by
> Pirsig's placing the modern crisis as a war between intellect and
> society for dominance. "A value metaphysics makes it possible to see
> that there's a conflict between intellect and society that's just as
> fierce as the conflict between society and biology or the conflict
> between biology and death. Biology beat death billions of years ago.
> Society beat biology thousands of years ago. But intellect and society
> are still fighting it out, and that is the key to an understanding of
> both the Victorians and the twentieth century.... [T]he Victorians were
> the last people to believe that patterns of intellect are subordinate to
> patterns of society. What held the Victorian pattern together was a
> social code, not an intellectual one. They called it morals, but really
> it was just a social code. As a code it was just like their ornamental
> cast-iron furniture: expensive looking, cheaply made, brittle, cold, and
> uncomfortable. The new culture that has emerged is the first in history
> to believe that patterns of society must be subordinate to patterns of
> intellect. The one dominating question of this century has been, "Are
> the social patterns of our world going to run our intellectual life, or
> is our intellectual life going to run the social patterns?" And in that
> battle, the intellectual patterns have won."

No doubt states can behave immorally, like Nazi Germany and Communist
Russia, China, North Korea and Cambodia, not to mention Iraq (prior to 
the liberation), Iran and Venezuela. As for the dominance of 
intellectual patterns in America today, let's not forget Pirsig's 
important caveat them. "From the perspective of a subject-object 
science, the world is a completely purposeless, valueless place. There 
is no point in anything. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. 
Everything just functions, like machinery. There is nothing morally 
wrong with being lazy, nothing morally wrong with lying, with theft, 
with suicide, with murder, with genocide. There is nothing morally 
wrong because there are no morals, just functions. Now that intellect 
was in command of society for the first time in history, was this the 
intellectual pattern it was going to run society with? (Lila, 22)
  
> As to the "national consciousness", I offer one more Pirsig quote.
> "[T]he essence of the Victorian value pattern was an elevation of
> society above everything else, then all sorts of things fall into place.
> What we today call Victorian hypocrisy was not regarded as hypocrisy. It
> was a virtuous effort to keep one's thoughts within the limits of social
> propriety. In the Victorian's mind quality and intellectuality were not
> related to one another in such a way that quality had to stand the test
> of intellectual meaning. The test of anything in the Victorian mind was,
> "Does society approve?""

But today the American "national consciousness" (the collective state
representing a national consciousness) believes that intellectual 
patterns should dominate social patterns, as Pirsig makes clear in the 
passage above. Thus, intellectualism has become the new social pattern 
with the test of anything in the modern mind being,  "Does intellect 
approve?" However, intellect has its own weaknesss and flaws as Pirsig 
has so ably explained.

Platt