Re: MD the worst thing about 9/11 according to the MoQ

From: David Morey (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sun Oct 24 2004 - 22:32:52 BST

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    Roy Bhaskar has looked at some of these moral
    problems in the context of levels like Pirsig.
    Whilst Bhaskar accepts killing is justified in certain
    circumstances he suggests that killing as a means is
    problematic with regards to the overall evolutionary
    goal of eudaemonia, such bad means undermines the goal
    and has to be kept to a minimum.

    DM

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Sam Norton" <elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk>
    To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
    Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2004 2:29 PM
    Subject: MD the worst thing about 9/11 according to the MoQ

    > Hi DMB, anyone interested,
    >
    >> Sam said:
    >> I would also add a difference to
    >> DMB's amusing list: Quality doesn't care about the individuals lost in
    >> 9/11,
    >> only the actual and potential intellectual patterns (ideas). God sees the
    >> individuals lost as precious in their own right.
    >
    >> dmb replies:
    >> Quality doesn't care about those who died on 9/11, but God does? I don't
    >> even know where to begin in untangling the misconceptions contained in
    >> this
    >> ridulously emotional and outrageously manipulative assertion.
    >> To "care" about those 9/11 victims is a human quality and so since
    >> non-theists don't anthropomorphize the ground of being like that, they
    >> wouldn't ascribe such a feeling to the conceptually unknown, not without
    >> having their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks.
    >
    > I have raised this point before, and I didn't get a good answer from
    > anyone. But as it's got DMB
    > riled (not a difficult task ;-) I'd like to pursue it. As I understand the
    > 'standard' MoQ, the
    > highest value lies with those elements on the fourth level, ie what can be
    > 'manipulated with
    > symbols', and DQ. When, for example, Pirsig is discussing the American
    > Civil War he gives an
    > instrumentalist justification, which has no place for the value of people
    > as such. I quote
    > (capitalisation mine): "Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a
    > source of thought too. A
    > human being is a COLLECTION OF IDEAS, and THESE IDEAS take moral
    > precedence over a society. IDEAS
    > are patterns of value. They are at a higher level of evolution than social
    > patterns of value. Just
    > as it is more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than a patient, so it is
    > more moral for an IDEA to
    > kill a society than it is for a society to kill an IDEA." So it is not
    > that a person is more
    > important than a society (Pirsig claims that the sense of self etc is a
    > complete illusion in any
    > case), in the MoQ it is the intellectual construct, the IDEA which is more
    > important than the
    > society.
    >
    > So far as I can read it aright, the analysis of 9/11 from a MoQ point of
    > view would say that those
    > things of highest value (fourth level static quality and potential for DQ)
    > were IDEAS, not people.
    > "People" do not exist in the MoQ (they are a 'forest of static patterns'?)
    > and this reinforces my
    > view that, according to the standard MoQ the worst thing about 9/11 was
    > the loss of IDEAS
    > represented, not the loss of people.
    >
    > Am I reading the MoQ wrong on this? It would be in some ways reassuring if
    > someone could persuade me
    > that I am.
    >
    > Sam
    > (PS I'm not particularly hung up on the language of 'caring'. My point
    > about Christianity is that it
    > places a very high priority on the lives of individual people - despite
    > what some of those claiming
    > to be followers have done throughout history)
    >
    >
    >
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