From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat May 17 2003 - 21:00:28 BST
Steve, Matt and all MOQers:
Steve asked Matt:
Do you think that there is anywhere to get to? Do you think there are
higher and lower levels of awareness? Higher and lower levels of cognitive
ability? Higher and lower stages of moral development? Etc?
Steve asked Matt:
Do you personally find any use for the idea of transcendence? I think what
makes me cringe is the sense that you don't see any perspective as better or
worse than any other. It's the apparent lack of possibility of ascent in
your philosophy that bothers me. ... You say that you don't say that but in
your explanations I read you saying it again.
dmb says:
I'm not really sure what Matt was trying to say with the Geertz quote or why
Levi Strauss should send shivers, but it sure prompted some interesting
questions from Steve. And I'm glad that the topic of anthropology has been
raised because I've been thinking about it lately. Specifically, I was
thinking about what Pirsig said about the political role of "objectivity" in
anthropology. I thought the idea of political struggle might relate to what
were seeing in our own time. As is widely known, the various forms of
postmodern thought are being used as a political weapon, as a means to
expose, criticize and otherwise dismantle race and gender based hierarchies.
Clearly, Matt is no political activist, but as Steve's questions
demonstrate, its pretty easy to read him as generally holding the same sort
of anti-hierarchical position.
Side note: As I understand it, the Levi-Straussian kind of structuralism was
a school of anthropology vaguely based on a linguistic theory of the same
name. Its not a metaphysical term in that sense, nor does it refer to a
hierarchy. Now back to our topic....
Pirsig in chapter 22 of Lila:
He saw that during the early decades of this century anthropology's
unassailable Olympian "objectivity" had had some very partisan cultural
roots of its own. It had been a political tool with which to defeat the
Victorians and their system of social values.
These books (Benedict's PATTERNS OF CULTURE and Mead's COMING OF AGE IN
SAMOA.)were legitimate anthropological documents but they weres also
political tracts in the new shift from social to intellectual dominance,...
The cultural relativism became popular because it was a ferocious instrument
for the dominance of intellect over society.
dmb continues:
Much could be said about these passages, but again I'm thinking about them
with respect to postmodernism. It seems that the pomos are attacking
Victorian social values too, which still exist today in the form of
conservative and reactionary ideologies. Its no accident that Catharine
McKinnon and Phyllis Schlafley are on opposite sides in the culture war,
just to site one of a million examples in the war between 3rd and 4th level
values. Likewise, when talk radio hosts make fun of the politically correct
or complain about campus speach codes, this is a case of social and
intellectual values in political conflict. Its the same battle Pirsig
describes througout the book. This same battle manifests itself in zillions
of ways and even in this forum. Its not a problem if intellectuals beat up
on the Victorians, so much that the intellectuals keep wanting to replace
the views of old-fashioned church bigots with a defective view. I think
Pirsig's criticisms of SOM's amorality can equally be applied to
postmodernism. It is equally nihilistic with repect to social values, which
are regarded as an arbitrary construction and such. I think pomo has this
same defect as SOM, and its no accident that Rorty is basically a
materialist, a mind-brain reductionist. This is just the kind of thing
classical SOM was bound to produce, a direct descendent of what Pirsig seeks
to overturn.
Pirsig from chapter 22:
Now, it should be stated at this point that the MOQ SUPPORTS this dominance
of intellect over society, It says intellect is a higher form of evolution
than society; therefore, it is a more moral level than society. It is better
for an idea to destroy a sociiety than it is for a society to destroy an
idea. But having said this, the MOQ goes on to say that science, the
intellectual patterns that has been appointed to take over society has a
defect in it. The defect is that subject-object science has no provision for
morals.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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