[MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Mary,

On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Mary <marysonthego at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello again,
>
>> Question 1: What is the Intellectual Level, and specifically, what
>> makes it different from the Social Level?
>
> Pirsig was nothing if not subtle.  Hehehe!  True, he went on for two books
> ranting and railing against everything from World War I, the Hippies,
> Victorians, and people with more money than brains who could afford to buy
> elegantly engineered mechanical equipment without the slightest appreciation
> for how it works.  But on one point he was pretty muddy, leaving it to the
> reader to have the pleasure of working out the difference between the
> levels.  All of them are up for grabs and have been hotly debated.
>
> The key.  As the teacher says to her class right before the test, "If you
> don't remember anything else out of this class, remember this."  The thing
> that makes the whole construct of the MoQ WORK is the idea that sets of
> patterns only achieve the status of a Level when they cease to support the
> level they are in and go off to meet ends of their own.  Brilliant!

Steve:
Do you have any text to support this claim? As far as I know there is
nothing to the notion of attaining any special "status of a Level."
Pirsig uses "level" to refer to a type of pattern of value.  I think
that as soon as there were any intellectual patterns there was an
intellectual level since the intellectual level refers to the
collection of all intellectual patterns.

Best,
Steve