[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[skutvik at online.no]

DMB, All.

13 Aug. you wrote:


> "Pirsig's annotations on Copleston" (at robertpirsig.org) is source
> of the quote Bo and Platt asked about. Here's some context, so you
> can see what "stages" he's talking about and such. This is Absolute
> Idealism and the "stages" are stages of religion, stages in the
> realization of the divine All.
 
Well I have read all this, but regard it as Pirsig's hopeless pseudo-
scientific efforts - now a a theologian - as he before played physicist, 
sociologist and psychologist in the hopeless efforts to align the Q-
levels with their scientific namesakes. Why all these stages of religion 
that messes up the level matrix that so neatly covers it all? The social 
level IS after all the realization of an EXISTENCE (of life and death) 
and "religion" in its most basic form started here, then transformed by 
the intellectual level into the Christendom kind while f.ex. Judaism and 
Islam continued as the social level's counterpart of intellect's SOM.    

DMB
> See, every s tage of reality's unfolding is about God and religion, even
> the most primitive phase wherein "man cannot form an idea of anything".
> The whole thing is nothing but a divine unfolding. 

Your willingness to swallow raw everything the latter-day Pirsig says 
says is remarkable  - even to drop the MOQ if needed.  This 
"evaluation" isn't necessarily wrong, it may be sound SOM. 

> So when Pirsig adds a forth stage where the term "God" is dropped,
> you're supposed to laugh at how neatly and quickly he disposes of the
> whole trajectory of the thing. He's saying, politely, this is not
> philosophy at all. It's just religion, a relic of the social
> suppression of thought. He's mocking this overtly theistic form of
> Idealism by suggesting they drop their central term; God. I think it's
> pretty damn hilarious, actually. 

The fourth stage looks conspicuously like the intellectual level and 
GOD in the social sense is definitely dropped."Social suppression of 
thought" My foot! The social level is a way of thinking and the 
intellectual level is another way of thinking. 

Bodvar