[MD] What is culture in the MOQ?

[skutvik at online.no]

All MOQ discuss.

Long ago - on 20 December - Ron Kulp (in the "Knowledge as MOQ's 
intellect" thread wrote):

> We may only understand the world through culture he brings several examples of 
> But western culture is not the only culture.

And the term "culture" has kept me speculating ever sine, what is it in 
a MOQ context? To start from rock bottom, what we call matter - 
including the forces that govern it - are Inorganic (patterns of value) All 
living things are Biological POV and all human communities are Social 
POV  but  are all cultures intellectual POV? 

In LILA Pirsig attributes an immune system to each level (except the 
inorganic) The biological is the master-model that has given such their 
names , the social consists of the judicial system and its agents that 
punishes those who break the law, but he also postulates an 
intellectual immune system, namely that of mental institutions that 
deem those insane who trespass the cultural norms. He brings 
examples of how one culture sees one phenomenon as normal while 
another looks upon it as madness.  

This stems from his original MIND definition of intellect and because 
this is flawed it leads into a wilderness of contradictions. For instance 
there were no agents that watch over normality in the sanity/insanity 
sense among old and "primitive" cultures. They had no police either, 
but surely various means to keep the members toe the social line, for 
example that of ostracizing.  Among ancient people there were - um - 
cultural anomalies, but these were highly valued divine messengers, 
oracles  Conclusion "culture" is simply an enlarged social group, not 
an intellectual pattern.   

As usual the S/O definition (of intellect) makes more sense. We know 
that  madness - in the clinical sense - arrived with Enlightenment that 
was the result of the Renaissance, that again was the revival of SOM 
after the Medieval hibernation. SOM's "objective" attitude rejected all  
divine explanations, madness was illness of the (subject's) mind and 
the ill ones were put into "lunatic bins". In those times there was no 
cure, but along with the somatic medical improvement (woops another 
S/O "psychiatric/somatic") various treatments  were invented, 
lobotomy the most recent before our time's chemicals.

Conclusion, Pirsig is right about psychiatry being intellect's immune 
system, but it is the S/O-intellect, not a mind-intellect (or a symbol-
manipulating-intellect) manifest as "culture" all over the world. And 
now another aspect of intellect's crusade against social value is 
revealed. Here in Scandinavia (at least) psychiatry tries to make all a-
social behaviour (formerly treated by the social immune system as 
crime) into illness caused by social wrongs. No one is to be punished, 
prisons only make more criminals ... etc. That the MOQ as something 
that has intellect as a static levels will have an impact on all this is 
clear.    

I don't know if this adds anything to Ron Kulp's understanding of 
"culture" but it adds to our understanding of the MOQ's


IMO

Bo