[MD] Babylonian intellectuals

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Arlo 

25 July :

[Bo] before
> Arlo has become a mean little Jr. of late and his "agony" over us
> strong interpreters i a little pathetic...

[Arlo]
> Arlo's only "agony", I can assure you, is the embarrassment felt at
> watching your blind quest for "interpretative legitimacy" lead you all
> to new depths of dishonesty and distortion. 

Hold your fire. Pirsig's must be the strangest case in the Western 
cultural history by 1) presenting a system that will abolish academical 
philosophy (philosophology) by 2) postulating that it - with a welter 
rational disciplines - is the last and topmost level in a system of levels 
that violently resist being moved down inside the hierarchy. 

Now, the MOQ is no level, but its treatment of the topmost - intellectual 
- level is at least as humiliating for intellect as intellect's own was for 
the social level. This intellect vs. society struggle isn't over and 
intellect's resistance to the MOQ will be no less protracted , Not by 
violence, but by intellect's means, it will not allow itself to be reduced 
from thinking itself to the static value of a thinking subject/objective 
world.  

Intellect wants by all means to keep the MOQ an intellectual pattern as 
such safely inside its domain and you - intellect's henchmen - have 
already given us a show of its methods no less fierce than the social-
intellect struggle which is waged on society's home turf - violence. The 
intellect vs MOQ will be with intellect's non-lethal weapons, but no less 
effective.              

> This whole "strong interpreter" nonsense is just part and parcel of
> that. Once again, Bo, take your argument to its only valid ground,
> champion the cause that YOUR ideas are BETTER than Pirsig's. 

See, you want it all shifted to an inter-academic dispute, harmless for 
intellect that happily sees countless "intellectual patterns" - i.e. ideas - 
pop up and compete, but there is just one MOQ and it is the one that 
reduces intellect from its role in SOM  - as mind - to SOM itself, so this 
your trap we will not wander into. Thank you..    

> So long as you remain trapped in your prison of interpretative
> legitimacy, however, you are all just proving how intellectually
> worthless the SOL truly is. 

Granted, the MOQ is intellectually worthless - just as worthless as 
intellect looked to society in its time. It's outright dangerous and its 
creator Phaedrus was treated accordingly by intellect's immune 
apparatus. The recuperated Pirsig did no longer dare forward the 
strong MOQ only the watered-down version where the intellectual level 
had been reduced to - on one page SOM itself, to the next page where 
it is back to SOM's mind.    

> And when that intellectual vacuum produces nothing but the dishonest
> talk-radio bombast that it has, you are damn straight that anyone with
> any shame whatsoever will become "mean".

All this is expected from intellect's quarters, but as long as the MOQ 
holds water I'm not very worried. Phaedrus blasted the trail and as you 
- intellect's henchmen - are committed to argue from MOQ's premises 
you are forced to land in the MOQ. 

Bodvar