[MD] Social Level- Catholic Social Teaching

[skutvik at online.no]

On 1 Aug. 2008 at 15:10, david buchanan wrote:

> Bo said to Steve:
> ...and this means that absolutely all humans are at the social level
> because there's no tribe however primitive without a "mythology".
> Pirsig - on the other hand - seems to regard lawless human behavior as
> biological value (brigands, bandits etc) but IMO this does not fit,
> there are rebels who are regarded lawless (Robin Hood) but merely want
> a better and more just society.
 
> dmb says:
> Nonsense. Pirsig's theme on the contrarians is all about being able to
> distinguish between the criminals and the saints. That's what John
> Browne's truth was about, that's what the Zuni witchdoctor's trouble
> with the law was all about and that's what his own biography was all
> about. Both criminals and contrarians break social level rules but the
> former does it for degenerate biological reasons while reformers do it
> for intellectual reasons. Pirsig explains that its hard to tell the
> difference from the SOM perspective but that the MOQ clears up that
> confusion.

As always it hinges on how to interpret the intellectual level - as 
"thinking" or as SOM - the Brujo story was what gave Pirsig the 
impulse for the dynamic/static divide of his MOQ. The Zuñis had 
not arrived at the intellectual level (if we use the intellectual 
patterns that Pirsig lists as criterions) the story taking place within 
an entirely social setting, nothing about any intellect vs society 
struggle. The Brujo became a better leader of the tribe in the new 
reality that faced the Indians after the "white man" had entered 
their area. However, I think you fall into the "intelligence" pit, i.e. 
that the Brujo was smarter then the rest.    

PS. He uses this example as the majority="sanity" too, bur that's 
another issue.  

> Bo said:
> Right, an intellect-guided society (a culture where intellect is at
> the helm and have all traditional social institutions under its
> control) is just what I mean, According to the MOQ "raw" social value
> looks like evil to intellect, why Western democracies regard Moslem
> religious despotism with such disgust and wants to convert them 
> ...even at gunpoint.
 
> dmb says:
> Nonsense. The social level is only evil to the extent that it tries to
> control the intellect. Unlike SOM, the MOQ says that social level
> values serve a necessary function and it should be allowed to do so.

I can't see how I contradict these obvious MOQ tenets. I said that 
social value looks like evil to INTELLECT, but the MOQ is not an 
intellectual sub-set, the intellectual level is a sub-set of the MOQ. 
It's from the MOQ that the level reality unfolds and we see that 
each level is the necessary foundation of the higher. Intellect is 
static and as blind to the overall picture as the rest. 

> And it certainly is NOT an intellectual or democratic attitude to
> regard Muslims with disgust. That's George Bush, the neocons, and the
> social level religious freaks that have run this modern democracy into
> the ground. 

When we hear about stoning of unfaithful women, cutting off of 
limbs for thiefs and the sort of things that the Sharia Law 
prescribes -  and is practiced in the ideal Muslim states  -  disgust 
is the proper term. These states may be "safe" places for those 
who toe the line (so was Germany under Hitler) but it comes at a 
price.   

> People are already talking about impeachment and a war
> crimes trial. According to the MOQ, I think, these are a bunch of
> degenerate, neo-Victorian, anti-intellectuals. The war in Iraq is
> battle between their pre-modern fundamentalism and our pre-modern
> fundamentalism. Intellect has nothing to do with this. Its just plain
> old bigotry and greed.

What some US politicians thinks is irrelevant, USA's intellectual 
foundations are not the least shaken, the Supreme Court delivers 
verdicts, the press writes, DMB rails against the president and the 
Iraqi campaign. Democracy  goes on as usual. 

Steve:
> Did Pirsig write anything on how humans should treat other humans?
 
> dmb says:
> Tons. He thought Rigel and his friends were cruel and judgmental
> toward Lila and he thought it was moral to try to get them to see
> that. He cites John Browne and Abraham Lincoln because they served the
> cause of freedom. He thought it was moral to just let crazy people be
> cra zy for a while. He thought the cops who took him to jail had
> cruelty in their eyes. He said it was stupid to waste a million lives
> in the trenches of WW I. He thought it was degenerate for a scientist
> to "sell-out" for the sake of money. And of course human rights cover
> a lot of ground when it comes to human dignity and fair treatment.
> These are among the highest values. This isn't about manners, domestic
> relations or what we are supposed to do in polite society, of course,
> but its all about what people do and how they treat each other for
> doing it. The hierarchy of values even extends into the biological
> world, so that it is more moral to eat further down the food chain, to
> eat veggies instead of meat. (I
>   consider chicken to be a vegetable.) And he does not say so
>   explicitly, but we can extrapolate these principles to conclude that
>   we ought not eat people, not even as soylent green, unless you're
>   gonna die otherwise.

That the intellectual patterns are the highest and best goes without 
saying, I thought if Steve asked if Pirsig had explicitly delivered 
some MOQ "commandments". But - again - the MOQ is what sees 
the value context and also that intellect is a static level and can't 
go all unchecked. Elementary Dr. Buchanan-      	  

Bo