[MD] What is SOM?

[skutvik at online.no]

Gav, Ian, All  

10 Aug. Gav wrote:

>  bo: 
> 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.

> gav: SOM is/was the dominant 'operating system' or paradigm of western
> intellect. in the east i think we cannot say this....but surely they have
> intellect bo. therefore SOM cannot be equated with the intellectual level.
> QED.

You see SOM it as "a paradigm of western intellect" while I see it 
(SOM) as intellect itself and I claim that the Orientals had their 
intellectual (S/O) bout during the Upanishads period. If SOM was 
an intellectual operating system then the social level was an 
INTELLECTUAL operating system too.     

Bo


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The same date Ian wrote:

> You can't get away that lightly Bo,

> If you really are agreeing with that ... as I thought we had in the
> past anyway ... then our only disagreement is how this is actually
> expressed in the MoQ levels and patterns.
 
> The MoQ intellectual level MUST be more than SOMism .... SOMism will
> just find itself to be (or to have been)  a "static pattern" as MoQ
> intellect (and language) continues to evolve.

Why MUST it? Unless you (too) see the 4th. level as "a way of 
thinking" (see above for Gav) Or "manipulation of symbols" that 
Pirsig introduced to secure another decade of frustration and  
bickering. MOS is language in plainspeak with its origin at the 
social level. 

> The historical dividing line between social and intellectual may well
> be the original evolution of SOMism, and that will remain as a
> historial fact that once distinguished intellectual from social, but
> the "definition" of intellectual continues to evolve.

You mean that Intellect served its parent (social) level before it 
emerged with a purpose of its own as SOM?  I accept that, yet 
intellect WAS the S/O distinction from the outset. If we look at 
history Mediaeval Times was Greek thinking (SOM in our lingo) 
succumbing to social value. During these centuries church 
scholars used Greek thinking to (objectively) underpin religion 
(Aristotles was a Church Father) This was intellect reverting to 
social service, but it couldn't be used that way forever, it broke free 
anew .. and the rest is history

Bo