[MD] The value of ritual

[skutvik at online.no]

Arlo J.

As told I only fetch mail once so my replies may get out of sync.

13 May.:

[Bo] before
> the levels had to establish themselves before a new dynamic "charge"
> could be made, yet the anti-parent tendency is what sets the MOQ
> apart, thus the anti-social aspect of intellect is what counts and
> makes it so difficult for you to grasp the SOL  ....and the anti-SOM
> aspect of the MOQ.  

[Arlo]
> I don't "grasp" the SOL because it is mired with nonsense. This
> paragraph ranks up there (slightly behind your next). What
> "anti-parent tendency" are you talking about? 

I thought we - the MOQ veterans - could be a little lax - not need "to 
resolve ... at the end of each sentence"  you surely must  know the 
level struggle tenet?    

 [Bo]
> Intellect - the level - is the VALUE of the S/O distinction, but
> before the Quality context was revealed through the MOQ its built-in
> tendency to quell social value went amok, its S/O became existence's
> fundament, hence SOM.

 [Arlo[
> So SOM is "S/O run amok"? And the intellectual level was, basically,
> "broken" until some inevitable higher level of evolution would form
> to "fix" it? What other MOQ levels are like this? Was society broken
> until intellect came along to fix it? Was biology broken until
> society showed up?

Yes, SOM is S/O run amok. "Basically broken" however? I did not say 
anything about that, except you mean intellect's power is broken by the 
MOQ which is right, but what about these mysterious question ....".was 
society broken until intellect came along to fix it? Was biology broken 
until society  showed up?"  

On the contrary Social value's power was NOT broken until intellect 
established itself on top of it and labelled its parent  "subjective, 
superstition, belief ....etc ", The best example of "amok" social value is 
the fundamentalist Muslim culture that has the biology of their 
members at their disposal . Likewise Biology went unchecked until 
society established itself on top of it.          

> The "value of the S/O" distinction is a biological one, if any. The
> sensation of "self" apart from "world" can realistically be traced
> to a neural mass receiving input from nerves. 

Yes, there is a biological "self/not self" distinction (the immune system 
is based on it) as there is an "our cause/alien cause" that the social 
immune system is based on, but intellect's subject/object distinction - 
and its immune system - is something else, told so convincingly in 
ZAMM.    

> As I said to Marsha, experiments on animals (as horrific as they
> were) revealed that injury to the brain led animals to become unable
> to differentiate "their body" from "not their body", leading to
> self-cannabalism, etc. Biological patterns learn early on what other
> patterns are connected to their nerve-net, and from this basis
> respond to the world evidencing S/O value.

Agreement about the biological issue, but the social level is a world 
apart and the intellectual still another. There are so many instances 
where Pirsig stresses the higher levels' MORAL "having nothing to do 
with its parent's, rather regarding it as evil. I need not bombard you 
with quotes.    

Bodvar