[MD] Babylonian intellectuals

[Mary]

> 
> Arlo said to Bo:
> Would you say the mathematics of the Babylonians and Egyptians were
> "social patterns"? 

> dmb says:
> 
> Their calculations were impressive and remarkably accurate but I still
> think there is a difference between Egyptian mathematicians and what
> we'd call intellectual. Those mathematicians were priests, actually,
> and math was something like an elite form of spiritual knowledge. Their
> calculations were not about scientific accuracy but ritualistic
> precision and a good harvest. 

[Mary replies]

Yes.  The difference between the Social and Intellectual Levels is key to
understanding the nature of either.  As patterns of value, what does the
Social value that differs from the Intellectual?  As you point to here, the
Social values celebrity, in this case in the form of religion, while the
Intellectual values 'accuracy'.  

But what does valuing accuracy imply?  It presumes there is an objective
standard or absolute measure out there to be attained.  But why does it
value that?  It is the 'God of Reason' or, as Pirsig called it, the 'Ghost
of Reason'.  The break between the Social and Intellectual can be seen in
terms of a shift from celebrity worship to the worship of objectivity or
absolute truth:   where celebrity must be understood in the broader sense;
not Lindsey Lohan celebrity exclusively, but also God as celebrity, and the
local despot as celebrity.  The Intellectual Level can be seen as a break
necessary to release us from the tyranny of the cult of celebrity; only to
replace it with the tyranny of the cult of reason.

To see that the MoQ attempts to show us a way to value other than
objectivized truth, is as profound a shift as the Social-Intellectual split.
But to flippantly say that the world is not composed of subjects and
objects, but is composed of patterns of value instead reveals only a
shallow, intellectual understanding of the MoQ: no better than a cult of
value, and no more useful.