[MD] Is this the inadequacy of the MOQ?

[rapsncows at fastmail.fm]

A,
Thanks for the recommendation to this Koestler fellow, I had never heard
of him before.

About levels...  First, I just composed my reply to Mark's (118's) post,
so to get a sense of my frame of mind it might be best to read that
reply
before starting on this one.  About levels, I just don't see what good
there is for me to get too into it.  Thinking about them casually is one
thing.  Knowing that there are these different sources of influence on
me (and others), and being reminded to consider them all if I get caught
up in a bad pattern (or if someone else seems caught in a bad pattern)
seems helpful.  But I really don't see a point to trying to make a
physics of it.  I guess this is the crux of a lot of my efforts so far
here: am I missing something big?

I happen to have read a little about Hitler for the first time a few
months back, so I can offer a couple things here too.  My understanding
is that Pirsig was on point when he said that Hitler was very much taken
by the patterns of his Victorian society.  I don't know a thing about
victorian society though :)  My understanding is that he was considered
a mediocre artist and a mediocre intellectual, and that he very much
wanted to be
an important member of society.  I don't know if it was the want of
power, or fame, or respect, but perhaps it was this that Pirsig was
talking about when he mentioned Hitler's being dominated by biological
patterns.  Now, as you mentioned, I guess the "biological moral" is: in
the battle between biology and biology, biology can do as it will.  But
I don't recall Pirsig giving us any rules for morality within a level!
So, to the extent that there was a battle between a jewish society and
and Aryan society, and at the societal level, it seems all was moral.
But I think that that was the intellectual argument offered by the
Nazis, or perhaps it was just their hope.  In reality jews were part of
a german society... so the intellectual level is supposed to solve the
moral problem.  But, the intellectual level is the highest static level,
so if there is no intellectual resolution, to what is the intellect to
yield morally? I guess the presumption is that there is an absolute
truth which judges intelligence fairly.  I don't know what Phaedrus
would say.  But, I do think that he would not accept your having granted
Hitler a mainly intellectual basis for his suicide!  As I understand,
Hitler had a preoccupation with suicide throughout his life, and many
times when his movement hit a bump in the road he gave in to despair and
mentioned that he should just kill himself.

Now, you said, "But what he [Hitler] did was enslaving intellect under
society, by a totalitarian ideology."  I have two directions to go with
this.  The old one you know: (I haven't decided yet on your wording, but
let me play with it here and see what you think) if the biological level
"informs" the inorganic level about morality, and it the social level
"informs" the biological level about morality, and if the intellectual
level "informs" the social level about morality, and if the dynamic
level is pre-intellectual, what informs the intellectual level of its
morality?  How is one to judge a totalitarian ideology?  It is an
intellectual conception.  Whatever the intellect will inform society
about will have a societal flavor, but a totalitarian ideology is an
intellectual idea.  It is difficult for me to imagine some absolute
truth answering: false!  For mathmatics, and for science on the
inorganic level, perhaps absolute truth has meaning.  But for social
questions I think the whole point is that there may not be absolute
truth; or if there is, which may be a better presumption, we can't
obtain
to an objective vantage to know it!  Perhaps Phaedrus would say that the
Dynamic level will work it out in the end.

But this isn't quite satisfying.  So I have this second direction.
Perhaps freedom will give us a clue!  Still we will not have the
objective vantage with which to be sure, but it seems that freedom might
suggest the answer!

Let me start with another example.  Murder.  If we can ask,
intellectually, is murder moral or immoral?  Is Murder high quality or
low quality?  Let us not look at the margins for the moment, but at the
center, think of the the murder of a nice, well-behaved child... playing
in the park one fine, summer afternoon.  The murderer might argue that
he should be free "from" restriction in this regard; the universe values
freedom, you should not put this barrier before me; the universe is more
interesting if I can murder at my whim, and that is why I was able to do
it; if reality wanted to prevent me, it would have done so; there are
plenty of possibilities that life has denied me: I can't fly like a
bird, or hold my breath like a while, etc. and etc.  This is a very
intellectual argument; I don't think that there can be a doubt about
that much.

But is it short-sighted? or provincial?  The fact is, reality does
restrict certain seeming-possibilities.  There is another argument.
Just like I do not have wings like a bird, if I am restricted from
Murder...  Let me say it this way: if we restrict ourselves from Murder,
perhaps that restriction opens up more freedom elsewhere!  Just like if
the atoms of a DNA molecule restrict themselves to their highly ordered
configuration, rather than a lightly ordered inorganic pattern, animals
can go about flying in the air all over the globe, swimming to all
depths of all the seas, and walking about the
Earth loving and thinking, etc. and etc.  Murder is but one possible
action, which has very depressing repercussions; while the restriction
from murder is also one action, but which has much more lively
repercussions.  If we could obtain to a perfectly objective vantage on
the matter, perhaps it would be overwhelmingly obvious that there are
more options in a society free of murder than there are in a society
open too it.  Does freedom pick not-murder over murder?

The intellectual idea of a totalitarian state might be defeated by a
similar analysis.  Though of course any such analysis, due to our
position subjectively within the problem, suffers from a lack of
objectivity: that is, we must always worry that our results are too
short-sighted or too provincial.  I don't know if this is what Phaedrus
thought when he identified dynamic quality as freedom...  But even if it
is, and even if it is on point, and even if it is useful for something
like murder, I don't see how it can be very useful for close calls.
Like Lila, marital infidelity?  How are the levels (freedom) going to
help me answer that question?  In fact, it seems that any reliance on an
intellectual prognosis based on the levels will only take me from the
best dynamic answer and lead me into trouble.  Like I said to Mark, I
think this whole analysis of levels is a tool for getting out of the
"muddle", it is a tool for maintenance when the dynamic machine is out
of tune.

Tim
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