[MD] What is SOM?

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Marsha,


> Doesn't the s/o experience having overlapping social patterns
> (component experiences) and intellectual patterns (component
> experience) help?

Steve:
I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about. T9o clarify, I am saying  
that SOM is an intellectual pattern and my concern was whether you  
are seeing SOM as a social pattern as well as an intellectual pattern  
which would suggest to me what I think would be a misunderstanding of  
what social patterns are.

I see what you are saying about the types of patterns of value as  
components of experience, but I would say that the component that  
includes dividing experience into subjects and objects is intellectual.

Marsha:
> At the Social Level we don't think this is
> subject, this is object.  It's the social aspect of Mind, but we
> don't think it in a manipulating (Intellectual) way, we just take it
> for granted.
>

Steve:
"The social aspect of mind" seems to refer to Pirsig saying that  
inorganic and biological patterns are objective while social and  
intellectual patterns are subjective. Social patterns therefore are  
indeed subjective but it is only intellectual patterns that Pirsig  
associates with mind.

LC annotation #25: "For purposes of MOQ precision let’s say that the  
intellectual level is the same as mind. It is the collection and  
manipulation of symbols, created in the brain, that stand for  
patterns of experience."

So I don't see a social aspect to mind though intellectual patterns  
are culturally constructed. Pirsig defines culture as social and  
intellectual patterns.

RMP from Lila "The culture in which we live
hands us a set of intellectual glasses to interpret experience with, and
the concept of the primacy of subjects and objects is built right into
these glasses."

So intellectual patterns are indeed learned within a culture but that  
doesn't make them social patterns. These are still intellectual  
glasses not social glasses.

We don't think to ourselves "I am going to apply the transitive  
property of logical thinking that says that if A implies B and B  
implies C, then A implies C" we just go ahead and draw our conclusion  
without being conscious of the intellectual pattern that led us to  
the conclusion. That pattern of thinking is still an intellectual  
pattern since it is a pattern of thought even though it is so  
ingrained that we aren't conscious of using it. There is no such  
thing as "social thought" or "social mind."

Regards,
Steve