[MD] suspended in language

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Steve]
I'm guessing that the notion that some cultures and better and worse 
in some ways than other cultures is not such a problem for you so 
much as the fear of how such a notion could be deployed as a 
justification for cruelty or well-meaning but misguided subjugation.

[Arlo]
Yes, I tread with caution around those who are so eager to always 
declare their own superiority over others. But I think here you also 
capture something important, and that is "better and worse in some 
ways". I have no problem posing or answering specific questions about 
particular, and well-defined, comparisons. Or dismissing them as 
irrelevant. And while Pirsig's example talks about the dominant level 
of patterns, he doesn't seem to care about the particularities. For 
example, if culture A's intellectual level professes polar 
coordinates, and culture B uses Cartesian, I don't think Pirsig would 
say one can claim moral superiority over the other, provided in both 
the intellectual level dominates the social and biological levels.

[Steve]
In the MOQ, a culture is a collection of social and intellectual 
value patterns.

[Arlo]
So "culture" is then sort of a meta-pattern, itself neither a 
"social" or "intellectual" pattern? That's kind of what I was getting 
at, asking if it was something "internal" to the levels or not.