[MD] What's missing?

[skutvik at online.no]

Case 

19 March you wrote:

> 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.
> It could be argued that ancient and primitive peoples share different
> concerns than moderns. They are more concerned with satisfying needs a
> little lower on Maslow's hierarchy than we are today. One might argue
> that intellectual speculation requires a bit more leisure time than
> ancients and prehistoric peoples had available. Following this line of
> thinking it could be suggested that only a society well developed
> enough to support sloth can have an 'intellectual' level. But this
> would lead to the conclusion that the intellectual level was founded
> by slackers.

Your premises - that intellect ISN'T missing from the ancient texts 
and existence shows what's missing from your understanding of 
the 4th. static level and makes discussion difficult. Your "intellect" 
is simply SOM's "mind": The ability to think, to visualize a past 
and a future.     
 
> To say that the Torah for example is devoid of intellectual content is
> without substance. We see in these books a concern with history,
> economics, codification of a legal system, animal breeding,
> agriculture, mathematics, a search for the meaning of life and man's
> proper place in the natural order. Among primitive tribes, say the
> Rocky Boy Cree of Montana, we see questing after visions, well
> developed sciences of herbalism and astronomical observation, music
> and art. Among our most distant ancestors we see evidence of concern
> with life after death, with art and or education in the form of cave
> paintings, sculpture and tatooing.

Sure, from your premises, Torah, the Old Testament and the 
Koran are intellectual to the core. From the viewpoint of a mind 
arising from matter (or by divine intervention) history has been an 
"exponential growth" of mental prowess. But the MOQ introduces 
a totally different premises, its social level is not sociology and its 
intellect isn't speculations about "meaning of life" or "vision 
quests" rather the value that struggles to subdue (what it calls) 
superstition and ignorance. The "astronomical observation" you 
mention were hardly more than "astrology". 

The difference between Q-society and Q-intellect is most clearly 
outlined in the absence of the "skeptical" attitude in the former. 
There were no one that said: Look these visions and revelations 
that the prophets claim must have some objective explanation. 
THIS is SOM and THIS is what's missing from the said texts. But 
when I pointed to the obvious Pirsig said 

    "I suspect you want to hear that what is "conspicuously 
    absent" is SOM, but I am not sure that SOM was absent 
    in early Biblical times since early social statements such 
    as "Beware of the crocodile!" or "Javeh will reward you", 
    are SOM but are not intellectual in the MOQ sense. 

After describing so convincingly how SOM emerged with the 
Greek philosopher (in ZMM), then this. To avoid the SOL-ution 
nothing seems below par. 

> But one might just as well start a poll asking what aspects of this so
> called 'intellectual' level are not concerned with social and
> biological matters?

Have you read LILA at all? The subduction of social value is 
intellect's primary purpose, not that it knows anything about levels 
and/or purposes - but because the level below itself are all levels' 
"natural born enemy". Biological life struggles against inorganic 
death and social value abhors the biological "dog eats dog" . 
Thus intellect despises social value which in its view is the cause 
of all evil. Inside an intellect-steeped culture like the USA the 
penitentiary system and police becomes the hate objects of the 
intellectuals who by some knee-jerk reflexes see it as the CAUSE 
of crime.  This is how LILA describes the level-struggle and level 
alliances. So intellect is very much concerned with social and 
biological matters, but again, this is only visible from the MOQ's 
meta-level.      

IMO

Bo