From: Steve Peterson (speterson@fast.net)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 15:45:35 BST
> Pirsig writes: "What the Metaphysics of Quality concludes is that the old
> Puritan and Victorian social codes should not be followed blindly, but
> should not be attacked blindly either. They should be dusted off and
> re-examined, fairly and impartially, to see what they were trying to
> accomplish and what they actually *did* accomplish toward building a
> stronger society." This comes a short distance after Pirsig has said "We are
> living in an intellectual and technological paradise and a moral and social
> nightmare because the intellectual level of evolution, in its struggle to
> become free of the social level, has ignored the social level's role in
> keeping the biological level under control. Intellectuals have failed to
> understand the ocean of biological quality that is constantly being
> suppressed by social order."
>
> To my way of reading him, Pirsig is saying that social institutions need to
> be examined at the intellectual level to establish which are worth keeping,
> and which we are able to discard. It would be stretching the point to say
> that Pirsig subscribes to Conservatism, but it seems clear to me that he is
> allowing the possibility of some form of Conservatism at the intellectual
> level along the lines I have described (especially the bit: 'Intellectuals
> have failed to understand....' which could be seen as something of a
> Conservative mantra.)
>
> Sam
>
Thanks for posting this quote. I have often misread Pirsig to say that it
is always immoral for someone to favor a lower level moral over a higher
level one (probably because he seems to say this so often).
While reading Lila, Pirsig would say something like an intellectual idea is
always more moral than a social value. I kept thinking "what if it's a bad
idea?"
An example I had just recalled the minute before reading Sam's posting is an
old religious society in America that held that all sex was a sin.
Obviously this society failed to preserve itself so the ban on sex was a bad
social moral. It didn't pay proper respect for biological quality.
The evolutionary hierarchy runs two ways. We hold higher levels superior to
lower ones, but lower levels create the conditions for the evolution of
higher levels. So higher levels must answer to lower levels to the extent
of making sure those conditions continue to exist. There is no biology
without an inorganic basis, there is no society without biology, and there
is no intellect without society (e.g. The idea of Thoreau being completely
self-sufficient in the woods while still having time to write in a journal
is ridiculous).
Society increases biological quality of life and intellectual products such
as human rights that society has integrated make society stronger.
Biological and social morals by their natures serve biology and society
respectively. It is at the intellectual level that we look at societal
morals and decide if they serve biology and look at ideas to see if they
serve society.
Something might might appear to have high intellectual quality (i.e. Seems
to respond to dynamic quality), but if it doesn't also preserve or improve
society and lead to preservation of life or improved biological quality it
is a bad idea. I think this is what Sam means by conservatism.
Steve
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 10:37:57 GMT