[MD] What is culture in the MOQ?

[ian glendinning]

Bo asked
What is culture ?

I say "Culture" is the sum total of the Social & Intellectual levels.
"A" culture is one pattern across those two levels.

Ian

On 12/30/07, skutvik at online.no <skutvik at online.no> wrote:
> All MOQ discuss.
>
> Long ago - on 20 December - Ron Kulp (in the "Knowledge as MOQ's
> intellect" thread wrote):
>
> > We may only understand the world through culture he brings several examples of
> > But western culture is not the only culture.
>
> And the term "culture" has kept me speculating ever sine, what is it in
> a MOQ context? To start from rock bottom, what we call matter -
> including the forces that govern it - are Inorganic (patterns of value) All
> living things are Biological POV and all human communities are Social
> POV  but  are all cultures intellectual POV?
>
> In LILA Pirsig attributes an immune system to each level (except the
> inorganic) The biological is the master-model that has given such their
> names , the social consists of the judicial system and its agents that
> punishes those who break the law, but he also postulates an
> intellectual immune system, namely that of mental institutions that
> deem those insane who trespass the cultural norms. He brings
> examples of how one culture sees one phenomenon as normal while
> another looks upon it as madness.
>
> This stems from his original MIND definition of intellect and because
> this is flawed it leads into a wilderness of contradictions. For instance
> there were no agents that watch over normality in the sanity/insanity
> sense among old and "primitive" cultures. They had no police either,
> but surely various means to keep the members toe the social line, for
> example that of ostracizing.  Among ancient people there were - um -
> cultural anomalies, but these were highly valued divine messengers,
> oracles  Conclusion "culture" is simply an enlarged social group, not
> an intellectual pattern.
>
> As usual the S/O definition (of intellect) makes more sense. We know
> that  madness - in the clinical sense - arrived with Enlightenment that
> was the result of the Renaissance, that again was the revival of SOM
> after the Medieval hibernation. SOM's "objective" attitude rejected all
> divine explanations, madness was illness of the (subject's) mind and
> the ill ones were put into "lunatic bins". In those times there was no
> cure, but along with the somatic medical improvement (woops another
> S/O "psychiatric/somatic") various treatments  were invented,
> lobotomy the most recent before our time's chemicals.
>
> Conclusion, Pirsig is right about psychiatry being intellect's immune
> system, but it is the S/O-intellect, not a mind-intellect (or a symbol-
> manipulating-intellect) manifest as "culture" all over the world. And
> now another aspect of intellect's crusade against social value is
> revealed. Here in Scandinavia (at least) psychiatry tries to make all a-
> social behaviour (formerly treated by the social immune system as
> crime) into illness caused by social wrongs. No one is to be punished,
> prisons only make more criminals ... etc. That the MOQ as something
> that has intellect as a static levels will have an impact on all this is
> clear.
>
> I don't know if this adds anything to Ron Kulp's understanding of
> "culture" but it adds to our understanding of the MOQ's
>
>
> IMO
>
> Bo
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