[MD] The China Syndrome

[Andre Broersen]

Bodvar says:

It's the very same letter and if you now will ask where Pirsig confirms
the SOL its this passage

   There has been a tendency to extend the meaning of "social"
   down into the biological with the assertion that, for example,
   ants are social, but I have argued that this extends the
   meaning to a point where it is useless for classification. I said
   that even atoms can be called societies of electrons and
   protons. And since everything is thus social, why even have
   the word? I think the same happens to the term, "intellectual,"
   when one extends it much before the Ancient Greeks.*


You would not expect Pirsig to use the word "SOL" or say out loud that
"Bodvar is right"? This is as close as he could get. What "much
before" means I don't know, but "Ancient Greeks" spells SOM in a
MOQ context. Ipso facto! That he went on to the symbol manipulation
definition does not bother me, all who have the least inkling of the
MOQ will see through this as mere procrastinating. Also the asterisk
regarding the Oriental Intellect ... at least if we speak about the level
and not SOM's "intellect".
Thanks for reading my boorish posts

Andre:

Bodvar, your posts are not boorish! but I have gathered that you cling to an
idea and want to see this idea confirmed and proven time and time again.
Nothing wrong with that. I told you that we are going to have "our' little
tussles as well.

I think I sense what Pirsig is getting at ( I realise this is an incredible
assumption but I'll do it anyway):Pirsig says: If you extend the meaning of
'social' down into the biological...its becomes useless for classification.

This is the very exact same point I have argued in my last post: if you
extend the meaning of "intellectualising" ( i.e Intellectual levels of
value) to include "thinking" about  social and (in)-organic PoV's  related
to "experience" (ie non abstract) it becomes meaningless for classification.

How can you compare "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" to the latest
sensational book on gardening or cooking or the economy?
One cannot say that one is low and the other high static intellectual
patterns of quality. They belong in different categories/levels!!!

What Pirsig is saying about the intellectual level not extending "much
before the Ancient Greeks" I think that what he is suggesting is that there
is a difference between "thinking about" (call it "intellectualising" but to
make the difference please keep the difference in mind) and making sense
of the inorganic/organic/ natural world as it was understood in pre- Greek
times (the world of Phaedrus and its rhetoric, having given rise to opposing
points of view .. ie the Immortal Principle of the Cosmologists vs the
'decadence of the Sophists', ZMM p 368) in a rhetorical frame of mind as
opposed to and development of the dialectical (SOM) which happened "with"
the Ancient Greeks.
Now, to make sense of this I again refer to the point I am trying to make in
my previous post: the rhetorical side of intellect is firmly grounded in
experience, that's why Phaedrus was so attracted by it. This is the period
"before the Ancient Greeks".
Pirsig's Intellectual level is not from before the Greeks, it finds its
birth with the Greeks, especially with Aristotle...i.e. the start of
abstractions and subdivisions of these abstractions...Aristotelian
ethics,...definitions, logic,...forms,...rhetoric,...laughter...ha-ha,ha-ha.

Today..it includes math, logic and whatever other high abstract stuff  that
can be understood only with the aid of mathematical/ logical paradigms etc
etc..all firmly based in SOM and that is where you, Bodvar are correct,
Pirsig's intellect is SOL,but...he suggested that the 'true' intellect
should comprise the incorporation of rhetorical values. I.e an expansion of
SOM.
The expansion begins in ZMM and is developed in Lila and then the balloon
deflates. SOM superimposed on the levels?? Thinking about this  I think this
is not what Pirsig intended (again presumptious!). He constantly talks about
an expansion of SOM within his own development of the MoQ...it
encapsulates/incorporates/supersedes SOM. That's why.

Am I making sense?
Andre