[MD] What's missing?

[david buchanan]

Case said:
I think it is simply not true that the intellectual level is not expressed 
in the early books of the Bible or among primitive tribes. ...What has 
happened between these "early" examples and today is quantitative and 
exponential growth in facts and the ability to store and access facts. This 
has happen in approximately three stages...

dmb says:
I think the various cognitive structures that Piaget and others have 
identified in developmental psychology can very easily be used as a sort of 
window on our collective evolutionary development. You know, our collective 
evolutionary process is recapitulated in the maturation process of each 
individual member. Or so we hope. Anyway, Wilber's work presents a variety 
of concrete ways to make  distinctions between magical, mythical and 
rational cognitive structures, each corresponding to the various worldviews 
and types of culture. I mean, there is a scientific basis for drawing these 
sorts of lines. And these lines only imperfectly organize what is observed, 
of course. The lines are just ways to make sense of what we see in history, 
in our kids and in ourselves. Are you so much of a positivist and a 
behaviorist that you have already rejected any such developmental 
psychology? (And now with a Jerry Sienfeld accent...) I'm mean, come on! 
What is up with that? I think the comments from the letter are only pointing 
out that these earlier structures are detectable in ancient artifacts, with 
the Bible being one of the most well known among them. He's not saying they 
were stupid or anything like that, of course. He's saying that the 
difference displays more than just a different set of beliefs. Its   reveals 
a different way of thinking such that intelligent people could hold those 
beliefs. The bible is full of stuff that simply makes no sense within our 
contemporary worldview and everybody knows it. The stages or levels explain 
this difference WITHOUT resorting to the idea that the ancients were just 
ignorant or stupid compared to us.

Pirsig wrote to Paul:
Just when the evolution of the intellectual level from the social level took 
place in history can only be speculated on .... [snip] .... but if one 
studies the early books of the Bible or if one studies the sayings of 
primitive tribes today, the intellectual level is conspicuously absent. The 
world is ruled by Gods who follow social and biological patterns and nothing 
else.

Bo asked:
.., what is missing from the said Biblical age compared to posterity? If 
that can be pinned down we finally have Pirsig's definition of what 
constitutes intellect. Of course there are a billion "things" and, not much 
talk about politics and economics..etc. but you know what I mean.:  In a MOQ 
context what has happened in between?

dmb says:
A leap in the capacity for abstraction. Critical examination, skeptical 
inquiry, Socratic doubt, call it what you will. As I keep hearing in so many 
ways, the intellect is defined by the willingness and the capacity to 
scrutinize the traditional forms culture. Their opposition is analogous to 
the relationship between the biological and social levels, where the younger 
level both overcomes the limits of its parent level and tames or mollifies 
it at the same time. And, since Bo asked, I guesss I'd add that this 
critical examination doesn't have to be predicated on any particular 
metaphysical assumptions.

So there's my two cents,
dmb

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