[MD] e: Reading & Comprehension

[MarshaV]

On May 11, 2010, at 10:50 AM, Arlo Bensinger wrote:

> [Marsha]
> I understand intellectual patterns to be built on the SOM premise.
> 
> [Arlo]
> But again, if this is so, what is "cancerous" about any?

Marsha:
You tell me.  Are there any intellectual patterns that may be loosing 
their usefulness?  


> Certainly not SOM, since that defines the level.

Marsha:
Right.


> 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.

I think the lamenting has to do with head without heart.  Would have, 
could have, should have been different.  The body could have evolved 
with ten toes.  It didn't.  


> [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,

No, I don't think all intellectual patterns are cancerous. 


> it makes "intellect" at best something to be overcome in an otherwise
> harmonious evolution.

Marsha:
Let's please remember that evolution is an intellectual static pattern of
value.   Otherwise harmonious?  I don't buy that assumption.  


> 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.

Marsha:
Screw the "should"!   Only an ego talks in terms of "should."  The misconception 
that these patterns are things-in-themselves is the problem.  That is an idea 
that can be transcended by realizing all patterns are interdependent.  That's
where my optimism lies.   


 
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