[MD] Some historical perspective

[skutvik at online.no]

Marsha & Ron

21 Oct.  Marsha wrote:

Marsha before:
> Within the last few months I have come to the conclusion that, like Bo
> has been arguing, that Intellectual patterns are ALL of the
> subject/object type.  That is, Intellectual patterns are about the
> process that reifies concepts and symbols to be acted upon by a
> independent self.  The pronouns and nouns are a dead giveaway.  This
> is not from the MoQ point-of-view, but from a SOM point-of-view.
 
Ron :
> It is precisely this SOM point of view that MoQ rejects. The point of
> view that is absolute, cultural-centric and value-less.

I appreciate your support Marsha's but "reification of concepts" is the 
least thing the intellectual LEVEL does. It says that concepts are 
SUBJECTIVE representations of an OBJECTIVE reality "out there" 
and moreover that this objective reality is independent of our 
subjective "antics"; Prayers wont change anything, magic rituals are 
useless, nature follows its laws regardless of what we do or think. 

>From ZAMM page 368

    Now Plato's hatred of the Sophists makes sense. He and 
    Socrates are defending the Immortal Principle of the 
    Cosmologists against what they consider to be the decadence 
    of the Sophists. Truth. Knowledge. THAT WHICH IS 
    INDEPENDENT OF WHAT ANYONE THINKS ABOUT IT. The 
    ideal that Socrates died for. The ideal that Greece alone 
    possesses for the first time in the history of the world. It is still 
    a very fragile thing. It can disappear completely. Plato abhors 
    and damns the Sophists without restraint, not because they 
    are low and immoral people...there are obviously much lower 
    and more immoral people in Greece he completely ignores. He 
    damns them because they threaten mankind's first beginning 
    grasp of the idea of truth. That's what it is all about.  

This is what the INTELLECT in a MOQ context is all about. But in 
ZAMM Pirsig makes it sound as if the Sophist stand for Quality, but 
this passage reveals the true context. They were the subjectivists of 
the budding SOM while Plato & Co were the objectivists. 

Now, the point is that S/O distinction (as reality's base - as SOM) is 
WRONG, mind and matter interact, prayers work for those who 
believe, magical rituals makes people die or well in the cultures that 
believe in such. These SOM-induced dilemmas was what the MOQ 
addressed and what it resolves by showing that the dilemmas are 
caused by it's static quality while its enormous VALUE is due to the 
position as the highest level. 

I fell that you people are completely off-track regarding the big picture. 
DMB, Ron, Ian .. the resurrected Squonk ... all who have tried to 
disprove the SOL up through the ages may be great thinkers, but to 
re-write ZAMM:

    Bodvar abhors and damns them without restraint, not because 
    they are low and immoral people, he damns them because 
    they threaten mankind's first beginning grasp of the MOQ. 
    That's what it is all about  

Their "intellect" is what the intellectual level has hypnotized us into 
believing, namely  something "conceptual" going on inside our 
subjective minds, totally and principally different from what it 
"conceptualizes", while MOQ's 4th.level is the VALUE of this 
distinction. I guess this is just more water on geese, that you will go on 
about "reification of concepts" and the other try to show how many 
non-S/O "intellectual patterns" they can find before breakfast.                

Bodvar