[MD] What's missing

[skutvik at online.no]

Case  

I'll drop the Jesus issue, just some comments. 

On 25 Mar. you wrote:

> [Bo]
> Yes, this is well known, but I apply the MOQ and as usual it sheds a
> new and revealing light on history  ... as it does on our own times.
 
> [Case]
> Agreed.

Still wonder how you can agree as long as the MOQ rests on its 
level system and you don't see its purpose?  

> [Case]
> It seems to me that by insisting that "intellect" only occurs with a
> particular style of thinking, you narrow it down to something
> insignificant in the large scheme of things.

As said a couple of million times, the purpose of the upper level 
is to free existence of the lower level's constraints, thus intellect 
must have to do with subduing social values and all examples of 
intellectual patterns (provided by Pirsig) are of the "objective" 
kind thus intellect has very much to do with a style of thinking *) 
namely that which opposes social (subjective) thinking. I.e. 
intellect is the S/O distinction. 

*) No doubt you know this but it must be emphasized: It's part of 
intellect's strategy to call social value "subjective", in much the 
same way as the West has in its power to call other cultures 
"backward" or "developing". From the social level seen the 
subjective/objective distinction is not known/recognized or 
VALUED!!  

It looks like the discussion is dead tired of the intellectual issue 
and I have no idea what the current view is. Some time ago my 
so-called SOL(AQI) idea was raised (I was unsubscribed then) 
and I believed it was a renewed interest, but as soon as I 
reappeared people clammed up. So I would have liked to hear 
what your see as "intellect", but then you don't see any purpose in 
the levels at all ... phew!

> [Case]
> The Japanese were dealt their greatest humiliation when Commodore
> Perry steamed into Tokyo in 1852. The realization that others were
> masters of the planet and they were just backwater fisherman shocked
> the Japanese. In less than 100 years they absorbed 2000 years of
> western culture and spit it back in the face of the west. They went
> from swords to Zeros in less then four generations. This is
> unprecedented in human history. With their defeat of the Russians in
> Manchuria in 1905 they may have been the only indigenous people to
> have defeated a western power during the colonial period.

Agree, but what makes the East capable of such great leaps 
forward, and what blocks the Middle East from doing the same, if 
not having to do with what Pirsig speaks of in the RT chapter. 
The Orientals have transcended the social level (which blocks the 
Middle East) but they went through the intellectual stage too 
quickly and ended up in some Quality-like "land" without any 
"MOQ" (with its level lay-out) to tell them where they are. They 
only has their "Zen" and "Tao" which are void of levels. 

Remember the inter-level struggle/alliance that you scoffed at? I 
think this applies in the Oriental case. In LILA Pirsig described 
the alliance between intellect and biology (to thwart social value) 
but this also indicates a budding MOQ-society alliance against 
intellect (this can be because there is a level aspect to the MOQ) 
This is dangerous and HAS developed in various Oriental 
cultures (for instance China's callous treatment of criminals) and 
in the MOQ we have the means to prevent it.


IMO

Bo.