[MD] Teachings from the American Earth (Part I)

[skutvik at online.no]

Arlo and All 

2 Feb. you wrote:

> From that standpoint of your SOLAQI, perhaps you are right. However,
> I (for one)
> reject the idea that the intellectual level is S/O, as well as the
> implied "everyone was stuck in the social level until white man's
> Intellect came and set them free". 

It's sad to see the MOQ overwhelmed by "political correctness". 
The Greeks of 300 BC had nothing to do with the racism content 
that we - after the colonialism-imperialism era of Europe - have 
heaped on the "white man" expression. 

If we stick to the MOQ, intellect is a static level and HAS to 
display some characteristic other than "thinking" because that's 
no characteristic at all, we may say that the social level displays 
"social thinking" and the "biological level" ditto "biological 
thinking", i.e. that a "Metaphysics of Thinking" could have been 
built on it. No, it's only the S/O that provides a base for the static 
intellectual level! I wonder how long this discussion is to resist the 
obvious?       

> This is not to say the reverse,
> that everyone lived in glorious non-S/O worlds until white man's
> restrictive S/O enslaved them. I think one possible key lies in the
> metaphoricity underscoring the metaphysics. To paint very broadly,
> Greek-derived metaphysics located the "subject" as an external,
> eternally apart, distant observer of the world (S/O). 

Right, at least you admit that the Greeks represent the coming of 
SOM, and if so this added to Pirsig's in his letter to Paul Turner:

    I think the same happens to the term, "intellectual," when 
    one extends it much before the Ancient Greeks.*  

Even if this is much guarded he admits that the Greeks 
represents the intellectual level. Consequently =S/O. 

> Eastern
> metaphysical systems view the "subject" as an co-construct, not apart,
> active participant in the world. 

Yes, the Orientals HAD a brief (in this time scale) sojourn on the 
intellectual - SOM - level (the Upanishads philosophy) enough to 
establish "subjectivity" as something different from "objectivity" 
before going on to some Quality-like stage, don't you see the 
necessity of S/O before "repairing" it. Thus they are in a different 
league than the "aboriginals" who never had any such divide that 
needed unification.      

> And it was upon these layers of
> bedrock that intellectual understandings of the world were
> constructed. The intellect of the Native Americans (again painting
> very broadly), their emerging intellectual level, was built on similar
> foundations. Although I can see why an S/O Intellect would perceive
> everything apart from itself as inferior.

"The intellect of ...." indicates "the thoughts of" and this is the 
very fallacy. The Native American's thoughts never reached the 
stage of "their thoughts" being subjective and fundamentally 
different from an "objective" and INDIFFERENT nature. On the 
contrary they were at the social level where no such division 
exists, where correctly performed rituals would sway the 
animated nature.  

IMO

Bo