[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 12 Aug 2010 at 21:34, skutvik at online.no wrote:

Platt 

10 Aug. 

According to DMB Pirsig have said: 

    "The MOQ would add a fourth stage where the term "God" is 
    completely dropped as a relic of an evil social suppression of 
    intellectual and Dynamic freedom. The MOQ is not just 
    atheistic in this regard. It is anti-theistic."  

I don't deny it, but wonder where this quote is from, perhaps "Lila's 
Child". A fourth stage? Is that the 4th. level? Anyway social patterns 
aren't particularly "evil" seen from the MOQ, it merely says that the 
various static levels regard the lower one as evil, hence intellect's 
animosity re. social value. So the MOQ isn't anti-theistic, its anti-level 
and because intellect is the last and most fortified level - as SOM in 
the Western culture - it (the MOQ) is mostly anti-intellectual.    

Hi Bo, 

The quote sounds familiar but I can't pinpoint the source. As for the MOQ being 
anti-intellectual, it certainly is anti-SOM because SOM, the current 
intellectual level, is defective. It "has no provision for morals." (Lila, 22)  
Don't hold your breath for an intellectual level that admits that the world is 
a moral order and that evolution was driven by betterness. Here on a site that 
purports to understand the MOQ, resistance to the main MOQ premise appears 
impenetrable. By and large, SOM stands unbowed despite Pirsig's best efforts.   
   

[P]
> Personally I'm glad Pirsig wasn't around to refute the Declaration of
> Independence which, if anything, freed intellect and DQ from political
> repression, leading directly to freedom of religion as an individual
> right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

[Bo]
You're right, the Declaration of Independence" was/is also a 
declaration of freedom of worship. Religions as a social patterns aren't 
merely belief in God(s) but God as in the "Semitic" sense most clearly 
displayed in Islam which is an ideology - like communism - and 
freedom of worship is  absent, apostasy a capital crime.  The MOQ 
approves of  this (DoI) intellectual victory over social value, Europe of 
late sixteenth century was still much in the grip of religion as ideology 
used for social rectification. But the 4th. level - like all levels when in 
total control - churned on and on and on and by and by created a 
"social nightmare" ... as we know .    

[P]
Unfortunately we are living the "social nightmare" brought on by 100 years of 
"intellectual" control of society, beginning with Wilson. "Phaedrus thought 
that if he had to pick one day when the shift from social domination of 
intellect to intellectual domination of society took place, he would pick 
November II, 1918, Armistice Day, the end of World War 1. And if he had to pick 
one person who symbolized this shift more than any other, he would have picked 
President Woodrow Wilson."(Lila, 22)  Now we face, thanks to Wilson and his 
communist/socialist heirs,  what to our forefathers would have been 
unimaginable -- a bankrupt U.S.A.

--------------------------

[Bo]
>From your other post that date about "the good dog" you wrote: 
  
> The "Aristotelian framework" is what I consider the intellectual level to
> be,  dominated by S/O patterns. By contrast, John Wooden Leg experiences
> within a moral framework dominated by value patterns. Of the two paintings
> in the gallery of "truth," I find John's of higher quality. 

For some reason Pirsig had dropped the SOM in LILA, but from ZAMM 
we know that Aristotle was regarded a chief figure in SOM's evolution 
so again we get a proof for the intellect=SOM. In my "jesuitic" view Q-
Intellect isn't a something dominated by S/O patterns, it IS the very 
SOM and "the framework dominated by value" is the MOQ that by no 
twist of logic can be an intellectual sub-set.

[P]
I along with several others agree with you interpretation of the MOQ. That it 
is so fiercely rejected by some illustrates the inner fear of the intellectual 
level that viciously counterattacks any questioning of its self-proclaimed 
superiority. Finally, putting the MOQ inside its own structure is like driving 
your car around a parking lot looking for where you parked your car.  In a 
word, farcical.    

Platt