[MD] What is Zen?

[Mary]

Hi John & DMB,

> 
> Mary said to DMB:
> 
> If you would place the MoQ no higher than the Intellectual Level, and
> in fact, place it squarely within it, then you will need to explain
> exactly what the Intellectual Level values which sets it apart "off on
> purposes of its own" that differ in Value from the Social.
> 
> 
> 
> John replied:
> 
> Simply put: Intellectual patterns value truth, social patterns value
> celebrity.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
What is truth?  What is it based on?  Is it absolute or relative?  Isn't
religious belief truth for those who believe it?  Or political truth?  To
say the Intellectual Level values truth is to say the Social Level does not,
yet there are a thousand truths valued at the Social Level.  I think you are
really saying that the Intellectual Level values a different 'kind' of truth
than the Social.  If so, I completely agree with you.  One major truth for
the Intellectual Level says Quality does not exist.
> 
> 
> dmb says and says and says:
...
...
... 
How did reason get separated from what's good?


[Mary Replies] 
Reason is not separated from what's good, it's just not the highest possible
good.  
> 

[DMB restates the part he has down and lectures me on the shortcomings of
SOM as though I don't understand them before concluding with this]
 
That's just wrong, you know?

[Mary replies]

Yeah, I know, DMB.  Do I get an A in your class?  And by the way, I
apologize in advance for the flip attitude, but I can only be tolerant of
being called stupid so many times before compelled to respond.  You need to
take a chill pill, or as our forum friend 'Frank Booth' said to me one time
(in a point well taken I humbly add), "twitter me, babe."

[DMB continues]
> Capitalism and technology are supposed to improve life, supposed to
> liberate us from drudgery and oppression. 

[Mary Replies]
Now this is an interesting bit. Capitalism is supposed to improve life?
Spoken like a true trickle-down Republican. ;)

[Dmb]
And it did, it has but
> they're not doing the job because there is a flaw in our modes of
> thinking, in the scientific worldview, which has no provision for
> morals. That's where we get amoral science, predatory capitalism, the
> reactionary right, the religious right and all the forms of modern
> alienation. The purpose of intellect in general is to improve life, to
> serve the ongoing process of evolution and growth and development. 

[Mary Replies]
Odd that you are lumping predatory capitalism, the reactionary right, and
the religious right all in there with the Intellectual Level.  This
illustrates a fundamental lack of clarity about what the Intellectual Level
is, I think.

Your next statement about how the 'purpose of intellect' is to improve this,
that and the other is also questionable.  You pride yourself on analytical
rigor, but I'm not seeing it today.

[Dmb continues...]
> 
> Mary continued:
> 
> You will also have to explain how the MoQ, which disparages SOM and
> finds it anathema, is supposed to fit within the same set of patterns
> of value.
> 
> dmb says:
> 
> 
> That question tells me that we have very different ideas about the
> meaning of the central terms; SOM, the MOQ and the intellectual level.
> As I understand them your question makes no sense. 

[Mary replies]
My question might make more sense to you if you would give any consideration
to what I, Marsha, Bo, Platt, and others have said.  A long time ago
somebody told me I would never learn anything as long as my mouth was open.
This is also good advice when on a ship with lots of seagulls circling.
Don't look up while talking.

[DMB continues]

SOM and the MOQ are
> both intellectual descriptions. Period. They paint different pictures
> of experience, of reality. As Pirsig says, they are like two different
> kinds of maps and the purpose is not to trash SOM entirely. If SOM
> didn't work, it wouldn't have been around so long. Scientific
> objectivity definitely has its up side. Hospitals and iPods spring to
> mind. But we have more than enough twinkies and reality shows. There is
> an island of plastic garbage the size of Texas in the middle of each of
> our oceans and millions of anti-depressants are taken every day. It's
> time to rethink some things, you know?
> 
[Mary replies]
Uh, yeah, I know.  I guess you haven't noticed you'll get no argument from
anyone here about that?

[Dmb]
> The MOQ says rational thought would be wiser and smarter if it had a
> heart. It's about adding some aesthetic sensibility and moral
> sensitivity to our ways of thinking. It's about reclaiming the
> passions, which were imagined as the wild horses of the soul in Plato's
> picture. We're supposed to tame and constrain them so the rational mind
> could be in charge, a claim which the Chairman defended so adamantly in
> that Chicago classroom as "THE truth". By contrast, Pirsig and James
> are expanding on David Hume's assertion. That great empiricist said
> that reason was a slave to the passions, not the other way around. And
> we see this in Pirsig's codes, where "Dynamic Quality is a higher moral
> order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for
> philosophers of science to try to suppress DQ as it is for church
> authorities to suppress the scientific method. Dynamic value is an
> integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress
> itself." (Lila, p. 366)
> 
[Mary replies]
Another big duh, except for the part about how 'rational thought would be
wiser and smarter if it had a heart'.  Nope.  It's about something entirely
different.  If you'd like to know what I think it is, you can ask me, but I
know you won't since you've already got it all worked out - completely
understandable, since that attitude is a hallmark of SOM, and you are one of
the most SOMish people on this forum.  Anyway, to paraphrase Horse, if
you're going to say that Pirsig's entire work is about nothing more than
giving the Tinman a heart, you're going to need to provide direct quotes -
not inferences - direct quotes.

[Dmb ...]
> 
> Anyway, I think that SOM and the MOQ are both intellectual descriptions
> in the same way that English and Chinese are both languages or the way
> Hinduism and Christianity are both religions. Or maybe the most apt
> analogy would be the dirty old sock. When it's turned inside out,
> you're still walking around on the same territory but somehow things
> are fresher and brighter and a lot less stinky. This is also very well
> described in terms of a copernican revolution, where the sun and the
> earth remained but they're relationship was rather drastically
> reconceived. In the same way, when we move from SOM to the MOQ,
> subjects and objects are no longer the essential ingredients, no longer
> the pre-existing structure of reality that makes experience possible.
> Instead, subjects and objects are secondary concepts. They are just
> abstractions derived from experience, conceptual tools that operate in
> experience.
>
[Mary replies]
Funny, these are similar to my own analogies from before which illustrate
the differences between the Social and Intellectual Levels.  I used them as
a reminder that it took an entirely new set of patterns of value to get from
despotism to democracy or southern Baptists to atheists.  Your arguments are
demonstrating a profound lack of clarity in definition between the Social
and Intellectual Levels.  That's apparent throughout your post here and is
of concern since you are a self-styled 'expert' in the field.  I have
absolutely no problem with experts per-se, just those who proclaim
themselves to be without having understood the material.

I understand exactly where you are coming from.  You wish to have Pirsig's
work elevated to join the pantheon of philosophical thinkers.  A worthy goal
and one I support (believe it or not), but what you fail to appreciate is
that the most useful aspects of Pirsig's work cannot be understood in terms
of a subject-object conversation.  The worst offence you commit is in
failing to follow Pirsig's own formulation of what a level can and cannot
be, how they can be distinguished from each other, and how they interact.
The levels are not simply boxes where you stick a pile of similar things,
they just look that way from a SOM perspective.  They are sets of Patterns
of Value.  If you want to understand the nature of any given level, do not
look to the list of 'things' that happen to be in it, instead look to the
similarities of what those 'things' value.  You will find it much easier to
distinguish them that way.

Truly best,
Mary