[MD] Politics

[skutvik at online.no]

Platt and Moqtalkers

On 1 Mars you wrote:

> > With SOM (rationality, knowledge, science ..etc.) = the 4th. level,
> > the MOQ tenet of the upper level being out of the former pose no
> > argument against intellect as the highest static value and its moral
> > superiority over social value is firmly established.  
 
> May I suggest that so long as the 4th level (SOM) has no provision for
> morals it will never do a proper job of dominating the social level. I
> think Pirsig makes this clear in his critique of intellectually-guided
> socialism. 

While SOM, intellect had no moderator above itself and truly had "no 
provision for morals" But with the MOQ it became the value of the S/O 
distinction, as great a moral increment as  any level before it. From the 
MOQ we may now look back and see how intellect while SOM  
screwed things up. From the there it looked as if the human beings at 
some remote time grew "religious" and became moral (conscious of 
good and evil) and further that "materialism" came along and 
undermined religion and thus made human beings slip back to their 
Godless ways. But according to the the MOQ the levels - intellect 
included - are moral increases, further that  the social level did not 
begin with classical monotheist religions rather with the notion of 
existence as transcending life. The first burial rituals does IMO indicate 
the beginning of the 3rd. level. The emergence of this awareness - one 
may call it the idea of time -  created the belief in ancestry, that of the 
ancestors existing in a realm beyond and some particular behavior - 
moral behavior - from the living were required for upholding this 
existence and securing their own entrance upon death. OK I'm 
straying , but the point is that the social patterns we know as religion 
may look as is THE moral institution,  and SOM as destroying their 
foundation, but ...phew .. "what's good and bad, need anyone tell us 
that"?

Bo