[MD] What all is about.

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Peter

On 5 Nov. you wrote:

> you refer to the Muslim world as a social level culture that has not
> adopted intellect as it's focus. This is a touchy subject and you are
> brave to say that. I'm not sure you are right though your words
> certainly resonate. 

Yes, it is a touchy subject particularly as "not being focussed at 
the Q-intellectual level" may sounds as if subhuman, but you 
have understood it like I do. The lack of a "social level" in  SOM  
causes much confusion. Pirsig modestly said all levels are known 
but the social has no SOM counterpart, it simply means any 
grouping together of individuals. When in addition Q-intellect has 
attained a faulty interpretation as mere mental activity, there are 
trouble. 

> The Muslim world has produced fantastic
> architecture and art over the centuries and, of course, 

Well, "architecture" as an academic study is certainly intellect, 
but building - even the most impressive edifices - aren't IMO, The 
Egyptians and Babylonians were not intellectual cultures (in 
Pirsig's view) and the cave paintings were/are as artistic as any.   

> they have given much to mathematics also; all of these require
> intellect.

Mere calculation isn't  intellect but intelligence, As said to David 
M the said Babylonians and Egyptians knew the relationship 
between the legs and hypotenuse in a rectangle and used it, but 
only with the Greeks and Pythagoras' Theorem did it become 
intellectual in the sense of showing how it objectively works and 
is an eternal truth.

During Medieval time - when the weak Greek-administered 
intellect went into hibernating - the legacy was taken care of by 
Arabic scholars, but this scientific-intellectual endeavor, and the 
secular lifestyle the academics lead, threatened Islam's real 
cause and the Assassin sect (an Al Qaeda counterpart) sprang 
up. They displayed the usual disregard of death and assassinated 
the Sultans and Kalifs who supported the academics. This 
fanatism is islam's tragedy, it surfaced again these days as it saw 
its purity threatened by Western Values (read: intellect's patterns)  

> I am not a Muslim but my impression of their way of life is
> one of very strong social pressures where it is barely possible to even
> consider that Allah may be a myth as that in itself would be enough to
> guarantee your oblivion; they could argue with the non-believer but
> never really consider their point of view. 

Exactly!!!    

> It's a growing force, a true giant; I hear of Westerners converting to
> Islam but I never heard of an ex-Muslim.
 
I don't really think Islam is growing, perhaps it's progress in some 
parts of the world - say - Africa compared to their animism, and 
some oddball in the West may want to be "devout", but in the big 
picture .... now I almost start on the Pakistan and Afghan issues.   

> Many Westerners are the same though; those later-day, born again
> Christian saints; Julian Jaynes in his 'Origins of Consciousness in
> the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' said that this possibility of
> hearing a voice inside your head as if it were not your own was due to
> a different brain structure.

Yes, I have maintained that Christendom were of the same - um - 
semitic quality until the Enlightenment movement and the 
ensuing decline of the Church's influence. Now I open another 
Pandora's Box, but the real source is Judaism of which Islam is a 
mere sect as is/was fundamentalist Christendom. But in contrast 
to the Muslim world the Orthodox Jews are a curiosity in Israel 
and the born-agains in USA and Europe can't unhinge 
democracy.  

The Julian Jaynes' theory we once discussed much, I believe it 
can be a valid description how very early mankind - the social 
level's infancy - perceived reality, perhaps some retained the 
capacity and is how the prophets of old received their many 
messages.  

Bo