[MD] subject/object: pragmatism

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ron]
I thought this is what I was saying.

[Arlo]
You said, "Intellectual is the VALUE of the individual to the social/cultural."

We are saying different things. The intellectual level is not a 
description of how the "individual" is valued by the "social". Each 
level, as I see it, is a matter of value-relations within that level 
between certain "individual" patterns within that level and the 
larger patterns formed by their collective activity. Indeed, I'd 
argue that historically its been the exact opposite of what you 
suggest. Intellect's S/O foundations moves the "subject" into a role 
of mere observer. What YOU think about mathematics doesn't really 
matter, two plus two will always equal four. What YOU think doesn't 
matter, if that volcano erupts it does so because of natural forces 
that we can only passively witness and objectively describe.

And "intellect" has historically pretended it was independent of 
social-cultural patterns. It attempts to isolate "man" and present 
the image that his vision is clear, that in fact society obscures 
that vision. It presents the illusion that there is a "pure" 
subject-object value relationship that is the goal of intellect, one 
which sees through the haze of distortion created social patterns. 
This is what echoes in your statement above.

Intellect, I'd argue, is a valuation of a "transcendence". A 
transcendence that in S/O thinking elevates a material world to be 
objectively viewed by a lone subject. Buddhist intellect views this 
transcendence as a union, or a dissolution, of subject and object 
(which ZMM echoes). Intellectual patterns are an attempt to codify, 
quantify and/or describe aspects of this transcendence. And the 
underlying social and cultural beliefs about this transcendence guide 
and structure our orientation to it.