[MD] Post-Intellectualism

[Ron Kulp]

> On Jun 28, 2014, at 11:27 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 4)  Deep Ecology.  This is an also hihgly intellectuall  stance that
> questions intellect's anthropocentric ontology.   This was what I
> meant earlier about "antihumanism" -  faith in human-centric intellect
> leads to absolute catastrophe.  Human rationality isn't our proper
> source of values, Nature is our proper source of values for out of her
> we sprang and in her we have our being.
> 
> So the one aspect of anti-intellectualism I'd cop to, is that last.
> My whole philosophical journey was rooted there.  I don't believe in
> weeding out good plants.

Ron:
Two problems that need clarification 
John. 
First, intellect's anthropocentric ontology. What else could intellect
Be but anthropocentric? Even when
It focuses on the broader human good, one which encompasses care
For and observance of the environment, it is always to enrich the human experience. It's job is to solve
Problems. Human problems. 
Some would consider human rationality an extension of nature.
But you are talking about the locus
Of values, which boils down to this,
You interpret RMP as placing that locus on intellectual values. But if you read his work, the locus of all value is Dynamic value.
Remember the idea that we emerge from the environment is an idea.
A good idea but a human idea.
All experience can only ever be our
Human experience we can "know"
No other.

Second

John Carl states:
Without the imagination of a hall filled with sound, no
intellectual pattern of composition can occur.   Here's a big problem,
I have.  Where's art?  Where does art fit in?  You can say "intellect"
but when you make intellect the arbiter of all reality, it tends to
decide for itself what is art and what is not and that is a very bad
idea.

Ron:
That's because you still insist "Art"
Is separate and distinct from the human experience but what you are
Really asking is how does beauty fit
In. How does RMP's explanation account for the beautiful in human experience again if you read his work
He explains that Dynamic quality, the
Ineffable good the force that drives and compels is the source of beauty.
Now, some wise folks contend that
In order to see hear feel or taste beauty to apprehend it, it must have
Meaning. Therefore meaning, good and beauty become synonymous.
(Experience is composed of preferences) therefore intellect and
Art are synonymous ( the rendering of meaning from experience ) 

But first and foremost John you do
Realize that MOQ subscribes to
Idealism, that everything we experience is derived from thoughts
About experience. Almost the entirety
Of human experience is based on layers and layers of thoughts about experience. The wise then note that
All of human experience, what we call nature and reality is an act of creation
it is art!  

This, above all else, is what you fail
To understand about Pirsigs explanation.

To say that Art is somehow degraded
By making it the center of a metaphysics is not to understand
The metaphysic.

Remember it is you that has the problem with understanding art as intellect, art as experience and art as reality. Somehow it denigrates some elitist notion of art as a sacred and holy static idea to be worshiped.
Remember it is your own prejudice 
You struggle with most.