[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[skutvik at online.no]

Greetings Marsha

4 May.you wrote:

> Hi Bo, Just feeling the need to reaffirm my agreement with you that the
> Intellectual Level is  comprised of intellectual patterns as SOM and
> represent reified concepts and the rules for their manipulation.
> Intellectual patterns create false boundaries, giving the illusion of
> independence, or thingness. For me understand this fourth level to
> represent a formalized subject/object level where the subjective is
> supposedly stripped from the experience to reveal an objective truth.
> "The question of "How do you justify the statement that Quality equals
> reality?" was the best one. The correct answer from a MOQ perspective
> is, "by the harmony it produces", but this answer is only for people
> who already understand the MOQ. Those who don't can't see the harmony
> and for them this answer is meaningless." (Pirsig, 2000)  
> I do think your point-of-view is more harmonious than the bits and
> pieces presented by many of the others.  

Sorry for the belated response, but I had to analyze it. I am at times 
cautious of your phrasing, for instance:  

    " The Intellectual Level is  comprised of intellectual patterns as 
    SOM and  represent reified concepts and the rules for their 
    manipulation".   

I don't know, but the "reify" term ["To regard or treat (an abstraction) 
as if it had concrete or material existence."] is hardly what 
charachterizes the 4th. level. Look Marsha it's so simple. ZAMM tells 
exactly how the intellectual level emerged. THE ABSTRACT/ 
CONCRETE DISTINCTION is an intellectual fallout, not the other way 
round.  

"Rules for their manipulation .." smacks of thinking and/or intelligence, 
but thinking precedes the 4th. level by hundreds of thousand of years 
and the "manipulation" were the same for the Neanterthals as for 
modern humans (only a matter of capacity). This is the fallacious 
intelligence definition of intellect.   

    For me understand this fourth level to represent a formalized 
    subject/object level where the subjective is supposedly 
    stripped from the experience to reveal an objective truth.  

But this is spot on. The objective, detached attitude leaves emotions, 
morals and values subjective disturbances that has to be stripped 
away to make way for progress. But/and here comes the juggler's act: 
It was progress  - the 4th. level IS the highest static value - but as 
SOM (i.e. before the MOQ) the notion that the S/O schism was 
existence's fundament created several nightmares, the social of 
destroying law and order (Platt's point) and the metaphysical that 
caused young Bo's "weltsmertz" back in the sixties sand early 
seventies before Pirsig's ZAMM "saved" me .       

    The question of "How do you justify the statement that Quality 
    equals reality?" was the best one. The correct answer from a 
    MOQ perspective is, "by the harmony it produces", but this 
    answer is only for people who already understand the MOQ.  
    Those who don't can't see the harmony and for them this 
    answer is meaningless." (Pirsig, 2000)  I do think your point-of-
    view is more harmonious than the bits and pieces presented 
    by many of the others.   

The SOL is no Bo hobbyhorse but Phaedrus' of ZAMM's point where 
the first deliberations on the Quality Ideas was "pre-intellect/intellect", 
this becoming Quality/SOM (the only level at that stage) And had the 
final MOQ kept the 4th. level = SOM all trouble would have been 
avoided, as it is the MOQ has wasted ten years over this quandary 
with the pig-headed resistance against a return to the roots.   

Thanks Marsha

Bodvar