[MD] Intellect in the Bible?

[John Carl]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 8:29 AM, <skutvik at online.no> wrote:

> For John
>
> Your criticism is based on the feeble grasp of the levels in general and
> the 4th. particularly, and you don't get much help from this forum.
>


Ok Bo, I want to say clear and plain that I agree with you that I am in
kindergarten.  I don't mind.  I like kindergarten, there aren't as many
rules and I'm free to play.  Just so you know that when you call me ignorant
and feeble, I'm fine with that.


> The 4th. level isn't knowledge of how to do anything, nor of knowledge
> of good and evil, it can best be recognized as SKEPTICISM.


Ok, I'll bite skeptically.  At least I've had some pre-school training in
Skepticism from Royce, Skepticism takes him two places 1) The value realized
in holding differing conceptualizations simultaneously and 2) the
realization of fundamental basis of value by the assertion that even a
skeptic must admit that error exists.

Viola.  Quality is the meta-transcendant basis of reality.



> In the
> ancient times when social value was top notch skeptics were absent,
> no one (for instance) in Israel said to a prophet "are we  supposed to
> believe this nonsense?"



Ok Bo, but wrong.  You obviously haven't ever actually read the text in
sequence and narrative form.  You obviously (to me anyway) have gotten your
information about what the bible "says" from so called experts in various
religious capacity.  Because it really is full of all kinds and differing
ways of saying that exact thing, all the time -  "are we supposed to believe
this nonsense."    Right there at the beginning of the story - moses is
arguing with a burning bush that NOBODY is going to believe this nonsense.
 So the text deals with skepticism and on a personal empirical level, I've
never met a non-skeptical Jew in my life so I think they learned it early
and well.



> The social age was (what we call) magical.
>

Well also in my preschool years I read Jacob Needleman's A Sense of the
Cosmos - I quote it frequently - and he takes on this assertion explicitly
and denounces it to my satisfaction.  It's cultural arrogance to interpret a
teaching so blithely  from afar.



> Intellect emerged when the Greek thinkers started to look for - and
> found - principles (natural laws) beyond the myths. This was the
> budding skeptical science that by and by over-ran the mythological
> (social) reality. The Semitic type religions the last strongholds.
>


I can see where you're coming from, but I'm afraid its just a bit too
sophisticated for me.  I'll stick to kindergarten, thanks.  You define
intellect too narrowly for my taste anyway.  I can't get away from my
perception of the Lila configuration of the 4th level being a dualistic
romantic/classic split, with what you deem intellect as the classic side of
the equation and subordinate to aesthetic non-verbal appreciation by me and
Platt.



> > I mean I'm sure nobody is naive enough on this forum to take Moses's
> > little story as literally true, therefore the only possible explanation
> > is that it has some sort of mythopoetic meaning and the only one that
> > makes sense to me is objectivism.
>
> Yes, this forum, as well as our whole culture, is so intellect-SOM-
> steeped that no one takes the social age serious, but mythologizes it.
> However, this was a deep one I hope you mean that
> intellect=objectivism. but .....??
>

Bo!  Sometimes kindergarteners babble profoundly.   It's just an operation
of pure chance.  Pay no attention whatsoever.  But yeah, I'm saying that
when Moses wrote the story of the man, woman and fruit, he was putting down
in mythopoetic form the story of SOM - which is objectivism - an
intellectual construct.  That's what it is plainly and baldly on the face of
it.  The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil looks good to eat - it is
good.  It makes man as gods, he can fly through the air, to the moon, blow
up the planet.  But eating of the fruit brings death - the ability to blow
up the planet isn't an altogether good thing.

It takes some sophisticated intellectual thinking to come up with a story
like that.  Think of Moses - who he actually was - born of two worlds, a
hebrew son saved from egyptian wrath and raised in pharoh's court with a
hebrew nursemaid  to tell him the stories of one culture, and the whole of
known civilization present to him on the other hand.   This dialectical
holding of two worlds simultaneously is about as intellectual as anything
there is.

Then he gets 40 years of herding sheep and thinking to himself. It's not
surprising to me to find some deep thought about man's flirtation with
objectivism.

duh.  Maybe you should join me down here in K-8.




>
> > It's virtually the one division between us and apes - they have
> > biology, we have biology.  They have social groups, we have social
> > groups.
>
> The social level is far more than mere "social groups". Beehives,
> anthills and wolf-packs aren't Q-social.



I agree anthills and beehives... I don't agree wolf packs.  I posit the
arising of 3rd level values with mammalian emotional evolution.  reptiles,
insects and birds don't count.  They don't interact as individuals within a
society, they interact as biological organisms all doing the exact same
thing with no DQ choices made as individuals.

Mammals are different.  I know this and believe I could prove it logically
and forcefully one day when I get in the higher grades.



> The true level occurred when
> human beings got the notion of "existence".



See, a bee doesn't seem to have much notion of existence either, but a wolf
and dogs do.

Thinking ABOUT one's notions of existence is when the 4th level of abstract
patterning arises.

I mean one may not
> believe in religious salvation, but we are convinced that existence goes
> on,


If you mean yours and my personal existence, that seems ridiculous to me
with absolutely no empirical foundation whatsoever.   I should say, "in your
dreams pal." and leave it at that.  For that's all speculation about
afterlife is, dreams and speculation.



>
> Sure, emotions are social, but wasn't it you who claimed that
> emotions=inorganic some weeks ago?
>
>
nononono.  That doesn't make any sense whatever.  Even my babbling couldn't
be that random.. ;)

Sigh.  I've got to get going...