[MD] Social level for humans only

[Krimel]

[Platt]
No doubt Pirsig would agree that evolution is not due to "supernatural
intervention." 

[Krimel]
It is not at all clear to me that some of Pirsig's interpreters here agree
with this. You for instance. If, for example, one speaks of Quality as a
driving "force" then it is hard to see what other kind of force one could be
talking about.

[Platt]
But, his questions still haunt conventional evolutionists.
"But why do the fittest survive?" 

[Krimel]
This question haunts only the terminally dense. Organisms survive to
reproduce.

[Platt]
Followed up by,  "Why, for example, why
should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and
nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a
professor of chemistry? What's the motive?" (Lila, 11)

[Krimel]
Again the simple answer is that there is no "why". There is no "struggle".
We live in an environment filled with diverse forms of matter energized by a
rich source of energy. All of it is driving toward entropy or stasis. To get
there it follows the path of least resistance. The fertile combination of
energy and matter present in this time and place make the path of least
resistance twisted and tortuous. Most of the sun's energy finds this path
easy. It is a straight line out into space. But the sunlight that finds its
way here bounces around, gets trapped in chemicals energizing them causing
them to interact in complex ways.

But the "motive," if you insist upon there being such a thing, is to find
the path of least resistance.

[Platt]
Until Pirsig's questions are answered other than by his theory of a moral
imperative, the conventional  explanation of evolution remains incomplete.

[Krimel]
Until you actually understand the theory it will always seem incomplete.
Once you do understand it, it will also seem incomplete but in ways that
don't make you sound like an idiot.
.