[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[skutvik at online.no]

Platt, Andre, Group

1 May 

Platt to Andre:
 
> You got it partly right, Andre. "It was this intellectual level that
> was screwing everything up." (Lila, 24)

Right, the intellectual level as SOM (before the Quality context was 
revealed) screwed up the social law and order by overdoing it's control 
of the social level - even joining force with biology to destroy its 
"enemy" completely (the campus section in LILA). This may have been 
your - Platt's - resentment against intellect-as-SOM, as for me it was 
the bleak metaphysical picture that SOM painted in the form of the 
Mind/Matter schism (as I knew it as) which left us isolated from other 
and from the world, and why I got so elated when reading ZAMM and 
understood how this mysterious Pirsig suddenly revealed the 
Mind/Matter quandary in a new light - as SOM -  and as I have said 
before, he seemed to have it by its throat by pointing to it as a fall-out 
from Quality - called "intellect" - in his new metaphysics. Then my 
disappointment with the final MOQ where "intellect" had become a 
bland mind-like something that let go of the strangle-hold on SOM. 
And now DMB, Andre, Horses who applauds the release of the villain. 
Where is SOM now and where is MOQ's explanatory power? Gone 
with the the wind!  "Manipulation of symbols" ... bah! How does that 
explain intellect's "screwing up" of social order and/or creating a bleak 
metaphysical outlook? OK, they are innocent, it's impossible to accuse 
the "blind of not seeing" they don't understand what deadly blow they 
inflict on the MOQ or if they do it's become a prestige thing.    

 
Andre:
> Well, blimey Platt...we (partly) agree on something. Problem still
> remains (and this seems to be the basis of our disagreement with
> regards to the intellectual level and , of course Bodvar's designation
> of it): how is it possible that we can reach this conclusion if the
> intellectual level is dominated by SOM? or for that matter constitutes
> S/O thinking?
 
See, he he's not capable of understanding the first thing.

> You see, in my understanding of the MOQ, dualistic thinking cannot
> change itself... no pattern can change in and of itself. The change
> comes from outside of thought (in this case)... it comes from
> somewhere else.
 
> I wonder what it is?

Nor does he understand that the the agent of change is DQ. Phew!


Bodvar