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

[skutvik at online.no]

Thanks Arlo. Finally the "greater length reply" I asked for and 
here is an even longer. 

On 5 Feb. you said:

> While, as I've said, its easy for me to see why some adhere to the
> notion that "intellect" is a "gift of the white man" (e.g., it plays
> nicely into the neocon message that our enemies are always, by
> definition, less moral (or even immoral) than us), it just doesn't
> fly. There is a curious reasoning here, that goes something like,
> "western european intellect is S/O, intellect is exclusive to western
> european culture, therefore all intellect is S/O". Rather than face
> up to the notion that intellect does emerge, in non-S/O form, from
> other cultural patterns, we "hack" intellect into two levels, to show
> not only that intellect is exclusively "ours", but that the "fixed"
> intellect, or MOQ-intellect as Platt calls it, is also exclusively
> "ours".

The tenet of the upper level emerging out of the lower I fully 
accept, but not intellect "in non-S/O form"? Give me an example 
of such an intellectual pattern. Also note that I don't reject that the 
intellectual level has emerged in the Orient (the only place that 
Pirsig mentions) only that it can't be non-S/O. The said distinction 
emerged during the Upanishads period, but was soon replaced by 
the Dynamic/ Static one. See the RT chapter in LILA and P's 
letter to Paul Turner.      

> If you start off defining intellect as S/O, then of course you'll be
> left with the finding that intellect is exclusive to Western European
> culture. But that self-fulfilling prophecy (and the "glorious us"
> superiority that some get from it) is short-sighted, blinded by our
> need to promote Western Superiority and warp the MOQ into an apologist
> doctrine for modern-Western status quoism.

As said I agree about the Orientals reaching the intellectual level 
-  this took place about the same time as in Greece. The fact that 
they transcended it and reached some Quality-like level makes 
them more advanced than ourselves. I wonder who's warping the 
MOQ to fit some political aim? Intellectual value came to the fore 
in the Western world after WW1, that's Pirsig's opinion at least. It 
surely exists - for example - in the Middle East with scholars who 
no longer believe in their religious myth and seek objective 
explanations ... etc., but these must lay low.          

> But it wasn't intellect itself that was born in Ancient Greece, but
> S/O intellect. And the two are not the same thing.
> Chinese philosophy, to use a ZMM example, is a intellectual pattern
> not dominated by S/O, as was Western Philosophy. "Thus, in cultures
> whose ancestry includes ancient Greece, one invariably finds a strong
> subject-object differentiation because the grammar of the old Greek
> mythos presumed a sharp natural division of subjects and predicates.
> In cultures such as the Chinese, where subject-predicate relationships
> are not rigidly defined by grammar, one finds a corresponding absence
> of rigid subject-object philosophy."

In ZMM SOM is an evil that usurpes Aretê (Quality). In the MOQ 
there are the static levels and no such DQ age exists, what's 
described in ZMM must be intellect emerging out of society and 
this LILA quote shows that Pirsig saw it exactly that way.  

    "Perhaps in Homer's time, when evolution had not yet 
    transcended the social level into the intellectual ....etc,

The Homeric heroes (Hector & Co.) were the ones who displayed 
Aretê and this era had "not yet transcended the social level" so - 
again - ZMM is about the intellectual level growing out of the 
social level. The Sophists did neither defend Aretê itself or social 
aretê, but were the subjetivists of the emerging intellectual aretê 
(Socrates & Co. the objectivists). This way all puzzle pieces fall 
into place, ZMM and LILA are harmonized and not worlds apart 
as they are now.  

> As if to drive the point home, Pirsig writes, ""My own opinion is that
> the intellect of modern man isn't that superior. IQs aren't that much
> different. Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as
> we are, but the context in which they thought was completely
> different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are
> quite as real as atoms, particles, photons and quants are to a modern
> man. In that sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his ghosts and
> spirits too, you know."

Here is the Intellect=IQ equation that has created (your) 
confusion. According to my dictionary intellect is  the ability to 
distinguish between what's subjective and what's objective, while 
intelligence is something else, at least no separate Q-level, but 
this is another discussion. 

> In LILA, Pirsig writes, "And, as anthropologists know so well, what a
> mind thinks is as dominated by social patterns 

Here Pirsig here speaks SOM for the benefit of the anthros, 
translated to MOQ he says:  "How things look from the 
intellectual level is influenced by its social parent".    

> as social patterns are
> dominated by biological patterns and as biological patterns are
> dominated by inorganic patterns. 

Goes without saying. 

> There is no direct scientific
> connection between mind and matter. As the atomic physicist, Niels
> Bohr, said, "We are suspended in language." Our intellectual
> description of nature is always culturally derived." (LILA).

"Intellectual descriptions of nature" is (by Pirsig correctly) 
equalized to "scientific descriptions of nature" and science is S/O. 
That intellect is out of society - "culturally derived" -  goes without 
saying.   

> Certainly, the Amerindians (to take one example) had an intellectual
> description of nature. Now, what they did not have was a S/O-derived
> intellectual description of nature.

No, this is not certain at all. As shown above Pirsig equates 
intellectual descriptions and scientific descriptions. In other 
words: S/O. Ancient Americans (like Ancient Greeks) had no 
description of nature in the objective, scientific, sense. Theirs was 
a non-S/O social value existence.      

> But what everyone also had, and where "we" stand unique, was in our
> elevating "intellect" OVER "society". "The new culture that has
> emerged is the first in history to believe that patterns of society
> must be subordinate to patterns of intellect." (LILA). Trouble was, as
> Pirsig asked, our intellect, which we raised above society, was/is
> flawed. "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)

Well, this is something else, but please understand my reasoning: 
The static levels know no levels - intellect no different - this 
context is visible only from the MOQ. Before the MOQ intellect 
regarded itself as reality and in that (SOM) capacity it is flawed, 
but intellect as a Q-level is the highest static good. In LILA Pirsig 
describes how intellect (as SOM) "joined forces" with biology to 
suppress social value, creating social havoc. This exact point 
gave LILA much bad reviews from "intellectuals", I guess they did 
not like to see their high perch being reduced to a mere static 
level (to the degree they understood anything).   

> Pirsig describes this further. "A scientific, intellectual culture had
> become a culture of millions of isolated people living and dying in
> little cells of psychic solitary confinement, unable to talk to one
> another, really, and unable to judge one another because
> scientifically speaking it is impossible to do so. ... Sometime after
> the twenties a secret loneliness, so penetrating and so encompassing
> that we are only beginning to realize the extent of it, descended upon
> the land. This scientific, psychiatric isolation and futility had
> become a far worse prison of the spirit than the old Victorian
> "virtue" ever was." (LILA)

Thanks for pointing out this quote. I will use it in my discussion 
with Case to show what restricted reality SOM creates. 

> The same sentiment was echoed in ZMM. "I know what it is! We've 
> arrived at the West Coast! We're all strangers again! Folks, I just
> forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral procession! The
> one everybody's in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of
> life that thinks it owns this country. We've been out of it for so
> long I'd forgotten all about it." (ZMM)

Ditto.

> And it is into this situation that Pirsig offers us insight into
> non-Western, non-S/O intellect by which to gauge where ours S/O
> intellect has failed, and to reappraise the situation we find
> ourselves in. 

"Non-Western, non-S/O intellect" Look! Intellect is the level 
ABOVE society and the only way it can control the latter (its very 
purpose) is by the S/O divide where objectivity is a "God's eye 
view" while (what society think) is a subjective "worm's eye view". 
The below quote (from above)    

    "The new culture that has emerged is the first in history to 
    believe that patterns of society must be subordinate to 
    patterns of intellect." (LILA).  

...is Pirsig's speciality of mixing SOM and MOQ. "The new 
culture" is SOM and in SOM there are neither "patterns of 
intellect" nor "patterns of society" only objectivity seeing the 
danger of subjectivity. It's the MOQ that sees the level-pattern 
context and from there the lower level is subordinate to the 
upper. However, the fact that intellect is another static level 
repairs its destructive power re. society. This is the reason for my 
obsession with reducing intellect from "it all" to the S/O divide.   

> The goal is not to resubordinate intellect to society,
> but to consider a better intellect to elevate over society.

Again, intellect is supposed to dominate society, but in the MOQ  
intellect is (supposed to be) a mere static level and THAT 
changes everything. 

> And in
> creating such as synthesis we move from an S/O intellect to a
> MOQ-intellect.

No, we move from a SOM to the MOQ and this shift does not 
take place within the 4th level! The last creates a level that 
contains that which is supposed to contain all levels. For a long 
time I tried to accept this - believe me -  but it required too many 
logical loops and violations.          

IMO

Bo