[MD] e: Reading & Comprehension

[david buchanan]

Arlo said (repeatedly):


.., 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 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.


dmb says:

I think that's exactly right. SOM is the flaw, the disease and is not to be confused with the patient. That's what happens when you equate SOM with the intellect level; instead of saying the patient HAS cancer you say the patient IS cancer. You don't have to be a doctor to see what a huge mistake that is.  		 	   		  
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