[MD] Shouldn?t we be, like, revolting ?

[skutvik at online.no]

Andre

I overlooked thisyour  post before replying to yours (to all MD) about 
economics. 

On 8 Oct. you wrote:

> Bodvar I think it is interesting that we arrive at completely opposite
> conclusions regarding where capitalism and socialism lie as far as the
> levels are concerned, and I wonder where, assuming you are correct, I
> went wrong. 

I like to think that I have a fairly firm grasp of the basics, but when it 
comes to details .... alas.   

> My reasoning went as follows: governments are social PoV's therefore I
> place what they do ( eg distributing collected taxes) and allocating
> these  to infrastructures, education, welfare, science etc etc by
> developing policies,programs and allocating monies. These need to be
> thought through, carefully planned etc etc. Does this then shift the
> activity to the intellectual level?

The Western culture is one where intellectual value has overridden 
social value, but the social structures are what intellect is built on, in 
the same way that the individual human organism are what society is 
built on. Not to sound schoolteacher-ish, but the level hierarchy must 
be understood.       

Western culture is intellect-dominated, like the Muslim one is social 
ditto, but this has nothing to do with "intelligence", but solely with 
intellect in the MOQ sense which means S/O-M. (the Far East cultures 
may have surpassed intellect, but this is not an issue here)  

Anyway, the phenomenon "governments" in its basic sense is social 
as is the country or nation in the basic communal sense with its 
paraphernalia of symbols and rituals, but the Western democracies 
and their governments are different from a dictator and his advisers 
(even Hitler had some kind of cabinet) They are totally controlled by 
intellect's objectivity. 

An aside: This is what Pirsig laments regarding US cities' crime in the 
sixties. In LILA he accuses intellect's objectivity that can't bring itself to 
punish anyone because there's always an objective explanation why 
people are a-social. 

An aside to the aside: Right now in Norway there is a case where a 
notorious madman attacks people with an axe, but the courts refuse to 
jail or isolate him, there must be an objective explanation why he do 
these things and psychiatric will hopefully  find out, but this must be 
voluntarily ... etc.           

> In this sense I may have misunderstood Pirsig when he talks about the
> Intellectual level as "manipulating abstract symbols that have no
> corresponding particular experience and which behave according to rules
> of their own". 

This is the fulcrum, Pirsig can't bring himself to see what (definition of) 
intellect his own examples promotes, namely the S/O one, but keeps 
procrastinating about the  intellectual issue. Now I guess he is totally 
inaccessible. 

> I fail to see the workings of government in my example given as an
> abstract activity. In the same way that a very serious chef writes a
> cooking book, develops a course of study/ includes wonderful theories
> about nutritional values, etc etc and promotes it as the next
> breakthrough in the science of balanced culinair thinking. Does this
> belong to the Intellectual level? 

Sure there's noting  abstract about governments, it all hinges on the 
flawed 4th. level that has haunted the MOQ and this discussion since 
LILA was published . There is no abstract/concrete (or any other S/O) 
in the MOQ - OUTSIDE ITS 4TH. LEVEL -  there is nothing concrete 
(objective) about the inorganic and biological.levels or abstract 
(subjective) about the social and intellectual.      

> I'm deliberately creating this contrast because I do want to learn
> about this and it is sometimes in the ridiculous that you find the
> sublime .

Right

Bodvar