[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[skutvik at online.no]

Arlo, Platt, All.

13 Aug.:

[Platt] had said:
> 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)  

[Arlo]
> Right. The CURRENT intellectual level is dominated by SOM patterns.

I knew Arlo or someone else from the orthodox school would zoom in 
on exactly that point. Like in the "intellect creating a social nightmare" 
where Pirsig saw the implications and hastily added "SOM-as-intellect"  
(which if replaced by the "socialist" MOQ would create peace and 
harmony) No, the 4th. level is SOM - or vice versa  - intellect is no 
mental vessel that can filled and emptied or topped up with new 
"ideas", it is as static as static comes. The expansion is the MOQ itself 
and this does not take place at any static level.  

> "[Phaedrus] showed a way by which reason may be expanded to include
> elements that have previously been unassimilable and thus have been
> considered irrational. I think it's the overwhelming presence of
> these irrational elements crying for assimilation that creates the
> present bad quality, the chaotic, disconnected spirit of the
> twentieth century. ...

To introduce "irrationality" into rationality (the intellectual level)  is plain 
DANGEROUS and something to be rejected vehemently. Rationality is 
the highest static good and must be kept high and dry only 
subordinated the DQ/SQ - the MOQ itself!   

> The dictum that Science and its offspring, technology, are "value
> free," that is, "quality free," has got to go. It's that "value
> freedom" that underlines the death-force effect to which attention
> was brought early in the Chautauqua." (ZMM)

In ZAMM it was just SOM or intellect (the ghost of rationality) versus 
Quality and after Phaedrus inside-out-turn SOM was seen as Quality's 
fallout. This is no "expansion of reason " but reason placed in a new 
context - a value context - by becoming A VALUE LEVEL!!!!!!        

> [Platt]
> 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. 

Platt and I agree on many things, but intellect - at least the Quality 
level - is static and can't change its S/O spots, Arlo has possibly 
twisted it into SOM's "mind". 

[Arlo]
> Pirsig's Metaphysics are one such pattern.

Sic!
 
Bodvar