[MD] e: Reading & Comprehension

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
I understand intellectual patterns to be built on the SOM premise.

[Arlo]
But again, if this is so, what is "cancerous" about any? Certainly 
not SOM, since that defines the level. Indeed, if all intellectual 
patterns are SOM, what exactly was Pirsig lamenting in ZMM? If 
"intellect" can be nothing else but SOM, then what's the beef with 
Aristotle? And those Sophists, they were peddling SOM too.

[Marsha]
Maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed you were defending the social 
level from being called inferior to the intellectual level.

[Arlo]
As I said, to the contrary, I think that calling "intellect" nothing 
but SOM achieves this. It puts intellect as a whole as a cancerous 
element atop society, it makes "intellect" at best something to be 
overcome in an otherwise harmonious evolution. Of course intellect 
should have moral dominance over society, but I think Pirsig's point 
of asking "was this the pattern intellect was going to run with?" 
shows that intellect-as-SOM is the problem.