[MD] 42

[John Carl]

Arlo,




On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 8:00 AM, ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu>wrote:

> [John]
> It's probably too late to go over this ground again, but I thought Pirsig
> said it was *the law* of gravity that was merely in our heads.
>
> [Arlo]
> You can substitute whatever intellectual pattern you feel comfortable
> with, the point is that we have torn down the "objectivism" of intellectual
> patterns but our only recourse has been to regress to "subjectivism".
> Certainly you're not arguing that Pirsig was advancing subjectivism?



John:  Not knowingly, but yes.  That is the effect of telling people who
are self-centered that there is no objective reason for choosing moral good
over moral bad.  They interpret that message in a certain way which
advances subjectivism.  Again as I point out - Rigel's very point.  It's a
potent problem or it wouldn't have flummoxed the good captain so long.  I'm
not sure it's been solved yet.


Arlo:



> Instead of expanding intellect, we've simply said its all relative
> opinion, and opinion that should bow to social (often in the guise of
> religious) authority. And this underscores a big problem for education.
>
>
John;  And the world!  Exactly.



> [Arlo previously]
> We are seeing a culture whose intellect has destroyed its own objective
> position (rightly so), but rather than an expansion of reason we are simply
> reverting to subjective relativism.
>
> [John]
> Very astute Arlo; the argument Rigel made perhaps?
>
> [Arlo]
> I think Rigel demanded a return to social authority, because he believed
> it was the only protection against subjective relativism, which was in turn
> the only alternative he saw to objectivism. Rigel's problem was that he
> didn't see the alternate way out of this dichotomy.
>
>
John:

Which is... Dq/Sq as alternative dichotomy, eh?  It might solve the logical
puzzle which is proposed, but can people grasp that?   As far as I grasp
what is meant by "DQ" from the conversations with people, is that it's
subjective surprise.  If you were expecting it, well... that's just static
quality (experience) but if something happens that you weren't expecting
then that's DQ.  Especially if it changes patterns dramatically.   I
imagine Rigel, if the captain had turned the boat around and headed back to
meet him, would have torn holes in that dichotomy as well.

The question is, why do people insist upon viewing values as relative only
to them selves?  And how do we fix that?  Now that modernism has eradicated
choice and good as existents.


Arlo:


> Moreso, what I was evoking here was Pirsig's sentiment that "And from the
> early seventies on there has been a slow confused mindless drift back to a
> kind of pseudo-­Victorian moral posture". (LILA) In a world of subjective
> relativism, social authority becomes THE authority, and this is what we are
> seeing in the way we are responding to the crisis in education. We see the
> walls of objective "Truth" come down, posit instead (the only alternative
> we see in) subjective relativism, and social authority moves into control
> the curriculum.
>
>
John:  yup.  I agree completely Arlo.  that is our condition and it poses a
great problem.  THEE problem even.




> [John]
> Freeing the mules to kick as they please reduces the world to a desert.
>  You don't mess with social patterns lightly.
>
> [Arlo]
> Well, as was mentioned by DMB and myself earlier, creativity and
> transformative power arise through structure, anarchy would ultimately lead
> back to biological rule.



J:  I would say "good structure" but there is bad structure too, for static
patterns.  Structures that allow for new ideas and social progress are
better than structures which strive to protect itself and allows no
change.  I believe that is what our structure now has evolved into and it's
going to be tough if not impossible to change.

 If by "biological rule" you mean packs of humans caring for nothing but
food and protection, ok.  I can see us reverting to a pack mammal rule, but
I believe all humans are all 4 levels and there's always a modicum of even
intellect in every individual.  And certainly there has been a social group
for an individual to belong to as long as there have been humans.  Society
is ubiquitous.

Arlo:


> No one has suggested, that I am aware of, that social structures be torn
> down just because they are social structures. For Freire, the goal of
> education is to allow people to not simply see when and where they are
> being oppressed by which social structures, but also the power to transform
> and reconstruct those structures to eliminate oppression. Freire was not an
> anarchist that wanted to see everything burn. Nor is Pirsig. Nor am I.


J:  Nor am I.

 Arlo:

But, simply preserving and recreating structures isn't the answer either.
> "You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to
> walk away, and know when to run".
>
>
John:  One thing I don't like about that song - it doesn't mention the
raise.  Sometimes you gotta know when to rairs the game, also.



> [John]
> SOM is a social pattern.
>
> [Arlo]
> I've been avoiding this, and I think Dan gave a great reply already, but
> since you're saying this again let me say, "no". "SOM" is an intellectual
> pattern of values that holds subjects and/or objects and primary
> metaphysical entities.
>
>
J:  I must have missed it.  Sometimes my mail hides things from me.  I'll
be glad to read it and respond.

But in short, I'll reply this - that successful intellectual patterns are
those that are chosen by a majority of a group.  And intellectual pattern
that resides in the head of one person, dies quickly and is forgotton, so
there has to be a society for intellect to happen as much as there have to
be biological beings in order to make up a society.

When a society has evolved out of a chosen (at some earlier time) set of
metaphysical premises, it gets labeled by the premises it follows - thus
our social system is SOM because that's its king.

There's a lot more, but I'll find that response of Dan's.



> [John]
> All intellectual patterns that succeed, influence and create societies
> that adopt them, "idolize" them, make them into concrete structures whereby
> people live and breathe.
>
> [Arlo]
> There is undoubtably feedback down the hierarchy. Indeed, ZMM is largely
> about how a culturally-adopted subject-object metaphysics has impacted the
> way we live, and the way we work, as much as it has the way we think. (In
> the same manner, social behavior has influenced the biological level of
> patterns.) For Pirsig, and I agree, SOM is an intellectual pattern, that
> certainly informed the social pattern in cultures where it was predominate.
> Consider that a Buddhist tea-ceremony is not SOM, subjects and objects do
> not become the primary metaphysical realities just because the Buddhist has
> moved from thinking about the cosmos to having tea in a certain way.
>
>
John:  Right.  SOM is a Western European evolved construct, with so much
intellect woven into it's social patterns which has given it power over
objects.  And this was my question which Ham responded to, might very well
be inevitable.  You have to bow down to the powerful subjects with
objective power - they rule.




> [John]
> And again, I think this use of the term "intellect" is questionable
> because it seems by that you mean a certain social authority (academia)
> whereas the MoQ definition of the 4th level is more complicated than the
> shorthand term we use around here - "intellectual".
>
> [Arlo]
> Calling academia a "social authority" is recreating the confusing between
> the Church of Reason and the university structures in ZMM. Of course, the
> Church of Reason is much larger than what we see as 'official' buildings
> and institutions of academia. Above the library here on campus reads the
> words "The true university is a collection of books", and while I am not so
> keen on the materialization present in the language, I get what they are
> going for, and I agree in spirit.
>
> [John]
> The one thing I don't like about the English system is you do that testing
> once and for all.
>
> [Arlo]
> I agree, and have been arguing this for years. This is part of the
> homogenous, factory-line process of 'education'. It is part of the
> 'sorting' that requires certain people 'sink' to fill certain labor needs.
> It is a gross misuse, and misunderstanding, of learning and assessment. One
> of the dirty little secrets of public education is that "remedial" kids
> really get no remediation, kids who need the most assistance at a task get
> the least. When I was in school, grades 5 through 8 were broken down into
> 5-1 (the smart kids) through 5-4 (the dumb kids). In every yearbook I've
> been able to review, there is very little (almost zero) vertical movement
> of students. That is, 5-4 kids are 8-4 kids. And those kids got the least
> attention, the least effort, the least materials, the least encouragement.
> One failed test could, quite literally, put you on a conveyor belt towards
> not just low-income labor, but a path where the benefits of creative and
> critical skills, the humanities, cultural literacy and even self-esteem
> were ultimately absent. By the end of the fourth grade, by about the age of
> ten, "education" has determined who grows and who is left to stagnate. And,
> not surprisingly, these are almost always kids from lower socio-economic
> families. I am not proposing a deterministic structure, of course, but
> certainly one that skews the results.
>
> [John]
> One way we fail our kids today is that its too easy to pass each grade -
> nobody wants you in the system for long.
>
> [Arlo]
> I agree, but would extend this by saying that "grades" (here not "A" or
> "C", but "5th grade" and "8th grade") need to be abolished along with
> grades ("A" or "C").
>
> [John]
> Who cares these days about a high school degree?
>
> [Arlo]
> Economically, I think we must realize that high-school alone no longer
> provides sufficient skills for most labor (higher paying labor) positions.
> For nearly all forms of employment, some additional labor training is
> required. The question is, should it? This gets back to the question of
> what do expect a "high school degree" to confer? In the past, we expected
> it was closely aligned with employment (as we do now with college degrees).


John:  I'll make a further assertion - it was more closely aligned with
life.  You learned the basics of how to fix a car and bake bread.

I myself was fortunate in that I attended a full time school which taught
all those things - and we had to work at some job on the farm or in campus
factories for 3-4 hours a day.  But that's all been changed now.  And I
can't figure out why.


Arlo:


> But is that expectation part of the problem? What if we removed the
> vocational aspect from K-12 all together, made that an entirely separate
> undertaking, and made a high-school degree mean civil awareness and skills
> towards the goal of an 'informed citizenry'. What if we started philosophy
> in elementary school, and tied K-12 education to cultural literacy,
> creative and critical thinking, the "arts", the non-labor specific skills
> that make us "free men" and not "employable labor"?
>
>
John:  That sounds good.  Along with some kind of voucher system that
allowed you a budget to undertake some kind of Voc Ed, you'd get a
specialized core curriculum designed to make you a good citizen.  Best of
both worlds.  Let's do it. :)



> [John]
> I think we should teach philosophy in high school and logic in the 8th
> grade. When I took logic in college I was incensed to think that all this
> time I'd been going to school, ignorant of the basic structure of argument.
>  And younger is a good age to teach philosophy too.  I think it, like
> creativity, is a skill we have in kindergarten and gets trained out of us
> for adult convenience.
>
> [Arlo]
> Agree on all counts, except maybe I'd advocate even earlier introductions
> of philosophy.


John:  Hey!  I said kindergartners are great philosophers. Can't get much
earlier than that.

 Arlo:

"Logic" is (as I see it) one derivative of philosophy, so I'd start in
> elementary asking "what is good?", what is beauty? what is right? What do
> these questions mean? Of course I would not expect a third grader to read
> and understand Kant, but the basic questions, and how we think about them,
> and WHY we should think about them, can start early and should be part of
> everything that follows. In other words, turn the pyramid upside-down.
> Don't have philosophy be some ultimate end-point of post-secondary
> education or post-doctoral work, have it be the starting point for all
> inquiry.
>
>
John:  Exactly.  Before you can grapple with great men's thoughts, you have
to learn your own.  School as it is now is predicated upon wiping the slate
clean and injecting some teaching into kids.  Set's up all the bad stuff
that happens later.



> [John]
> Philosophy for the masses!
>
> [Arlo]
> How about, philosophy BY the masses? :-)
>
> [John]
> The internet is offering more and more possibilities all the time.  I hear
> you can get an education from MIT for free online.
>
> [Arlo]
> You can, the catch is that you have to pay if you want the 'credit' for
> doing so. This is really no different than saying all knowledge rests in
> the libraries. Sure, anyone can go in and read all they want. But if you
> want a piece of paper saying "John knows X" or "John can do X", you need to
> find someone to sign off on that, and that is where MIT charges. There is a
> movement now called "Prior Learning Assessment" that (basically) says that
> 'you go out and learn all you can for free, in any way, and via any means,
> you'd like, then you come to us, we'll charge you only for assessing your
> skills/knowledge and the piece of paper that legitimizes your efforts'. You
> won't pay MIT to sit in their classrooms, talk to their teachers, use their
> computers, eat their dorm-food, read their books, etc., but you will pay
> for MIT's prior learning assessors to 'accredit' what you learn on your
> own. MOOCs are going towards this model as well; open for anyone and
> everyone, but to get 'credit' for being there, you have to pay the MOOC
> provider a fee.
>
> [John]
> But what we mean by "college" is more collegial.  The direct interaction
> with a good professor is what makes education much more than mere content.
>
> [Arlo]
> This is the big question. Is education more than simply access to
> information? Just because everything is online (or in a library), does that
> mean that all education is is the consumption of that information? Direct
> interaction with a good professor brings us back to what makes a good
> professor? And, of course, a big part of 'college' (of ANY educational
> institution!) is social networking. Who you know, who you work with, comes
> to mean (as I think you mentioned about Harvard kids) almost more than what
> you could get out of reading a book. Its almost no secret at the graduate
> school level that what you pay for is contact with certain
> social-professional networks. People often choose graduate school
> (certainly doctoral school, maybe not as much at the masters level) because
> they want to work with a certain professor, and become part of that
> professor's social-discourse community. I think (let's just say) doctoral
> students at MIT would certainly say they are paying that money for the
> chance to become part of a certain, specific faculty's community, not just
> for the information they are taught.
>
> Acceptance into a community of practice, not simply skill, is a large part
> of what educational institutions provide.
>

I agree, and use this reason to support the idea of social patterns
intermingling with intellectual ones, all throughout the range.  That's why
I say it's more of a dance between the levels than a fight.

Yours in the old do-si-do,

John