[MD] Arlo's Rant and 3rd levels

[markhsmit]

Hi Arlo,

I am not trying to combative but simply trying to understand where you are coming from,
not Pirsig, not the MoQ.  I could go back and read Lila once again, and I'm sure I
would get a different understanding of Pirsig's concept.  It is not so much as in
what is said, it is in how it is read.  This is true with any book that requires interpretation.
I do not have the opportunity to discuss this with Pirsig, if, as you say, he personified the
entire MoQ.

I still equate your sense of thoughts with the Ego.  You state that everything can be reduced
to thoughts, except the hardware.  Are we just a brain carrying around a body.  What
about the hardware of the brain.  I have studied the brain, dissected it, mapped it, studied
the behavioral impact of drugs on animal behavior (and mine), worked with patients
who are schizophrenic, autistic, bipolar, all in clinical settings.  These thoughts you 
speak of are not without hardware, they are all based on hardware just as our heart is.
When do we become separate from the hardware?

When you say the hardware in which we reside, who is this "we" your are talking
about?  It sounds more like a soul to me, is that what you mean?

I would suggest you free yourself of your Ego, it is much easier to do than to free
yourself of Self, what is left when you do that, Other?  As far as I can feel, I am part
of everything, how would I free myself of that.  I guess I don't know what you mean
by self, please explain.

Look into yourself and see how your description of thoughts differs from the standard
accepted definitions of Ego as defined by psychology and spirituality.  Perhaps this will
help you sort out if you are trapped.  I am of course premature in suggesting that
this is your dilemma since I do not know your thoughts.  However, your posts would 
indicate being stuck in Ego.

I of course am no better off.

Humbly yours,

Willblake2


On May 17, 2009, at 9:14:51 PM, "ARLO J BENSINGER JR" <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:
[WillBlake] 
I don't believe I am arguing against Pirsig, but supporting his heirarchy. 

[Arlo] 
Pirsig is quite clear that mental patterns emerge from social patterns, and he 
considers concepts such as "self" to be a mental pattern. I still don't see how 
your proposal is "inorganic-biological-intellectual" with "social" providing 
some filler or interference. 

[WillBlake] 
Arlo is talking about the peripheral mind, that behavior above ground, and 
claiming that the subconscious thinking is also societal, control by  language. 

[Arlo] 
Controlled and enabled. I am merely talking about what Pirsig wrote. "Mind" 
comes from society, not directly from the biological level. When he wrote "our 
intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived" he was very 
clear. 

[WillBlake] 
This cannot be true, it is the other way around. 

[Arlo] 
Maybe, but that is not the MOQ. 

[WillBlake] 
A society has a completely different consciousness which we are not privy to, 
in the same way each individual nerve is not privy to our thoughts. 

[Arlo] 
Pirsig calls this the "collective consciousness". I don't know about a society 
have a consciousness, Pirsig seems to think it does not. But then he talks 
about the Giant having a will of its own, so I don't know. 

But the very fact that our thoughts derive from the assimilation of this 
collective points to a structurating relationship, an unavoidable restriction 
alongside the very thing that enables it. 

[WillBlake] 
If all we are are our thoughts, what are we when we are listening to music 
without thought? 

[Arlo] 
I don't think you answered my question. If we are more than our thoughts, then 
what else are we? Are you suggesting a "soul"? Or something like that? 

When we are listening to music, we are very much our thoughts. Music is a 
symbolic language, one which relies on familiarity with the structure and 
syntax of the notes, just as spoken language relies on this for understanding 
its words. Music is a semiotic event. It is not outside culture, it is the 
language of culture. 

You can, as Pirsig recommends, break out of the "self", and enter the moment of 
pure DQ (through meditation, flow, etc.), but this is a dissolution of the very 
thing (the "self") you are arguing is the core of those moments. 

Wait, you do answer this here. Sorry. 

[WillBlake] 
We are the sum total of our awareness thoughts... 

[Arlo] 
Symbolically encoded experiences, sure.... "thoughts". 

[WillBlake] 
our subconscious thoughts... 

[Arlo] 
"Thoughts". 

[Arlo] 
our interaction with the environment.... 

[Arlo] 
Not sure what this means. Our interactions with the environment are, as social 
beings, mediated by language. Do you mean the moment of Quality perception? Or 
is this in reference to our biology, which you mention next... 

[WillBlake] 
the beating of our hearts, the intelligence of our immune system... 

[Arlo] 
This is the hardware in which "we" reside. Yes, our unique biology mediates the 
encoding of our experiences (we "see", and so are able to encode experiences 
with "visual" icons, e.g.) 

[WillBlake] 
the thoughtless passions, emotions, feelings that arise to form thoughts. 

[Arlo] 
Thoughtless? Heavens no! Our "passions" (outside of our innate biological 
reflexes) are fully informed by the cultural language we assimilate. "Love" and 
"hate" and "pain" and "heroism" and "pride" are all concepts informed by the 
stories, myths, music, drama, poetry and a countless repertoire of encoded 
experiences that make up the collective consciousness. Before "language", you 
would feel "love" only as a cat or dog. As a social being, "love" is so much 
more, and you feel it only after you assimilate the language to describe it. 

[WillBlake] 
The problem with the notion that society dictates thought is that 
individuals arise (especially in politics), that argue they have a social 
solution to correct our inner selves. 

[Arlo] 
Society does not "dicate" what you think. You are a unique organism with 
corresponding unique experience. "Culture" gives you the means to encode that 
experience, and as such both enables and constrains the results of that 
process. 

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