[MD] What is SOM?

[skutvik at online.no]

Ian, Platt & Gav 

8 August.

In the reversed order, Gav wrote:

> gav: where are we when we are in SOM?...we are in the world of western
> industrial alienation. we are divorced from the ground that gives meaning
> to our ideas, or to be more accurate SOM obfuscates or devalues this
> ground of being.

Yes, but the MOQ has no "Western industrial alienation" level so 
the question still stands. Pirsig says that the MOQ does not abolish 
the S/O distinction so it must have a place inside the MOQ, and - 
as in my well known opinion - it's the intellectual level, everything 
points to such an interpretation.

> this is why bob went nuts surely...he saw through the illusion - he broke
> the spell.

Agree, this is the greatest revolution since the Greeks, yet Pirsig 
may have been cowed into recanting because LILA's intellect is a 
bit ambiguous and has led to a decade of discussion.
 
> SOM is evil with respect to MOQ because the MOQ is morally superior to
> SOM: it has greater explanatory power - it is inclusive of the
> existential/phenomenological aspect of being - the very livingness of
> life. SOM severs this connection - i see its effects in the differences
> between the children i teach in the garden: the 16/17 yr olds ask 1/10 of
> the questions of the 10/11 year olds - the spirit of wonder and curiosity
> atrophies as kids go further along the institutional conveyor belt...and
> its all SOM. no-one wants this at an individual level, but at a social
> level such mollification is valuable....dispirited individuals are more
> docile.
 
There emerges a level-like relationship between  intellect and the 
metaphysics that has reduced it from reality itself (SOM) to a mere 
static level. That's why SOM is "evil" to the MOQ  ....  while in the 
competitive phase that is, after the MOQ has achieved dominance 
intellect is the highest and best static value . It has (in your words)  
"taken mankind to the zenith of technological expansion", the 
"nadir of nihilism" was due to its former metaphysics role. 

                                  ----------------

Platt said:

> We think we're in SOM whenever we think. But we're actually in MOQ all
> the time. 

Right, when the senses dominate we're at the biological level, 
when emotions dominate we're at the social, thus when we 
rationalize we are at the intellectual level because reasoning is 
distinguishing the objective from the subjective, i.e: SOM! 

The above is  the MOQ view, before the MOQ (when we were 
lodged in SOM) "whenever we thought" we thought we were in a 
mind compartment, one that the objectivist thought was a 
detached observation post, while the subjectivists thought it 
created the so-called outer world.  


                                -----------------

Ian said:

> Blimey, I agree with Platt again ... "We think we're in SOM whenever
> we think. But we're actually in MOQ all the time."
 
> That's a neat way to put the problem we have arguing to anything like
> conclusions, because our thought and talk is (mostly) hidebound by our
> SOMist heritage. Even those of us that just "know" we are MoQists, can
> help tripping up over the SOMism in our arguments, thought or expressed.
> (Is this the "Ker-Ching", in the Ron / DMB thread ?)

I can only say: Amen!


Bo