From: SWZwick@aol.com
Date: Thu Jun 03 2004 - 20:40:39 BST
In einer eMail vom 02.06.2004 16:49:28 Pazifik Sommerzeit schreibt
markheyman@infoproconsulting.com:
> How did Chomsky get into this? The critiques of the guy are valid --
> he tends to take things in isolation that don't exist that way, and
> then forgets to place them back into context to test his
> conclusions. ... And since his arguments don't hold up (since they
> don't really exist), he also represents a case of the biological
> overriding the intellectual. According to the MOQ, this makes him
> immoral.
>
> Adam Watt Said:
> Based on what, exactly, are you making these claims of immorality.
> Which text?
I haven't read Chomsky in years, but I did read "Deterring Democracy" from
cover-to-cover -- largely because I got fed up with his failure to connect cause
and effect in any ways that anyone who reads newspapers hadn't aldready done.
This may be because I was raised with a pretty leftist bias, so reading
Chomsky was like listening to Dad. My problem with the guy is that he focuses
almost exclusively on the evils of one actor -- the US. He mentions no other
evil actors except to show that they work in cahoots with the US. Although his
critiques of the US are valid, his tendency to view the US in this vacuum
brings us nothing we don't already know. In Zen terms, it is the sound of one hand
clapping.
The MORALITY statement comes from the MOQ. I see Chomsky's absolute, almost
Bush-like certaintly as part of a biological need we all have (in the sense of
it being a hard-wired neurological need), and this need has two components.
The first is what we in Germany call a "Feindbild" -- an image of an enemy we
can know with certainty is evil and against whom we can rally. Interlinked
with this need -- and it is a BIOLOGICAL need rather than an INTELLECTUAL need
-- is the second component: the desire for an ordered, predictable view of the
world. Bingo -- Chomsky provides that as well.
(So, by the way, does the MOQ -- which Persig makes abundantly clear when he
talks about our need for a paradigm, but the MOQ also acknowledges this need,
and the existance of this need is why Persig invites us to shoot holes in the
MOQ, which is what this forum began by doing).
Attributing "philosopher" status to Chomsky is, to me, a case of putting
BIOLOGICAL quality above INTELLECTUAL quality. In the MOQ, this is immoral.
Chomsky does serve a purpose -- basically, he provides a counterpoint to
those in the US who see America as a perfect shining light for the rest of the
world. Unfortunately, those people don't listen to him....
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