From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Mon Jun 07 2004 - 07:29:23 BST
Dear Platt,
I wrote 5 Jun 2004 07:09:30 +0200:
'From a point of view of assessing societies it is the freedom they allow at
a higher level (including freedom to dismantly those justifications...) that
determines their relative morality.'
You provided a supportive quote from Pirsig and added 5 Jun 2004
15:35:03 -0400:
'This also supports the moral validity of Reagan's "Evil Empire" and Bush's
"Axis of Evil."'
Sure. The Soviet 'empire' (Soviet Union plus supported communist regimes
elsewhere) was a less moral society than its capitalist competitor. Iraq
under Saddam, Iran and North-Korea are far less moral parts of the present
world society than the alternatives we would like to see there. They
made/make excessive use of policemen, soldiers and guns to repress (what
they perceive as) lower quality parts of their society (and what are in part
attempts to reform their societies in a more moral direction) compared to
more moral competitors/alternatives. The defining 'instrument of
conversation between society and biology' in capitalist society is economic
dependence. Capitalist society is therefore more moral than state-run
society, regardless of the (communist, Baathist, Shiite Islamist or
leadership worshipping) ideology used as an additional secondary 'instrument
of conversation between society and biology'.
I guess this to be quite acceptable for you (to the extent that you
understand what I mean and pardon me for my slight disagreement with Pirsig
on 'the instrument of conversation between society and biology'). Our
disagreement starts when I want to distinguish between the relative morality
of communist society (on the social level) and the relative morality
communist ideology (on the intellectual level) and when we are going to
discuss how to change less moral societies to the better.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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