Hi David and Squad,
I really enjoyed reading your last post, David. Your
misunderstanding and misconception, and my mistake - all words for
the same thing. Evil happens when something has gone awry.
I've hesitated to bring up politics in the Squad for fear of getting
too far off track, and/or inciting a riot! But, like you, I see the
present American political crisis in MOQ terms. Writ in large
strokes, the Republicans represent the social level - the status quo;
much like the infamous Victorians. Change is bad until proven good -
for me. While the Democrats are the party of the intellectual level.
This is not working, lets try something else. From the Republican
point of view, it should be no surprise that the nation founded on
separation of church and state is today trying it's damnedest to
reunite the two.
>From the MOQ perspective, American politics looks like a gigantic
pendulum swinging back and forth between social level presidents and
intellectual level ones. Given the way the temper of the times has
vacillated in this century, Pirsig's assertion of the rise of the
intellectual level and the battleground that's ensued is right on the
mark. Just within the last 20 years we've swung from the
intellectual Carter to the social Reagan and Bush and back again to
the intellectual Clinton - whom the social level is trying it's best
right now to depose.
Pirsig was wrong about the demise of the Victorians. They still
exist, and are intent on turning back the clock; but also unlike
Pirsig, I'm not so pessimistic about it. Without the social level a
purely intellectual society is a society of chaos. Change occurs in
small steps, those big ones are killers. It's a positive sign that
the pendulum is swinging at all. For centuries it stood stock still.
But everyone in some sense or other recognizes quality. The fact
that the pendulum is swinging now attests to that. The ascension of
the intellectual level in this century is what has taken the magnet
off the social side and allowed the pendulum to swing freely.
We live in "interesting times", because the swing is at it's most
energetic. With time, however, it will dampen down of it's own
accord and come to rest somewhere in the middle. The middle way, the
middle path, all things in moderation. For centuries it was firmly
stuck over on the right side. The intellect has set it free to
oscillate, and that should give us hope. It will come to rest in the
middle for now, and probably stay there for a while until the
fledgling intellectual level has matured enough to create a magnet of
it's own. Intellectually, we know that the future must hold a one-
world society, the demise of nationalism, racism, and all the rest.
But these ideas are new. The intellect has yet to fix them in
society, create a balance. So, we will keep swinging about that
middle axis until we do. I remain cautiously optimistic. We created
the bomb and spent billions in it's service - but we never used it.
I can't help but be optimistic about a species that had the power to
destroy their world in the palm of their hands, and even had the
occasional motivation to do so, yet resisted all the way through the
cold war. Maybe we're not so dumb after all.
Discussion?
Best Wishes,
Mary
> LITHIEN and everyone interested in the evil debate,
>
> It was a recent hurricane that made the trip down the Hudson all the
> easier for Lila and the author. He uses the image of a hurricane as a way
> to dipict the appearance of Dynamic Quality. Remember the bored tourist
> who was left with the story of a lifetime? This seems to suggest that
> Pirsig is making a case that destruction is a good, but notice how both
> cases are anti-static. One is literal movement down the river in a boat
> and the other is movement out of ordinary daily routines. There is always
> a very great danger that someone like Hitler will cross the line and
> decide for everybody what needs destroying.
>
> As far as the evil that men do, its nearly always the result of sickness
> and ignorance. I've spent alot of time trying to understand Hitler. I was
> a History major and did my undergraduate thesis on him. It's always more
> complicated than we'd like, but essential people are evil becuase that
> can't or won't see the truth. Did you see my last post where "sin" is
> redefined as a misunderstanding or misconception?
>
> In Hitler's case, a man who claimed to be the very embodiment of the
> German national spirit, maybe we could say he confused the social level
> values for intellectual values. His misunderstanding resulted in the
> deaths of millions. He has been posthumously psychoanalyzed every way you
> can imagine, and then some. But the bottom line is, he was one sick puppy.
> Maybe he was able to achieve power because the social values he held were
> recognized by the German people on a very deep level. They weren't evil
> values until Hitler tried to use them in the place where the intellect
> belongs. Notice what the Third Riech is so infamous for. Burning books,
> killing intellectuals and often people who simply looked smart and wore
> glasse. The NAZIs were anti-communist and anti-semetic, because, at least
> in part, commies and jews are seen as intellectuals. (NAZI = not-see.)
> They glorified war and militarized civilain life. They were big on family
> values and love of country. It's easy to see the social values that he
> represented because they're still with us. Yikes!
>
> Oddly enough, I see the current impeachment trial of Clinton in this
> light. It seems to me that Watergate and Whitewater are very much alike.
> In both cases you have paranoid, conservative Republicans abusing the
> power of government to destroy their political enemies. Like Hilter,
> American right wingers are anti-communist, anti-intellectual, anti-gay,
> militaristic, family values, etc. They see Clinton as the embodiment of
> the nation, but they think its an embodiment of America in the 60's,
> which they hate with a passion. They way they talk about moral leadership
> and the Presidency, you'd think they were expecting an American Furer. You
> know, it the the other side of the "character" issue. A murderous demagoge
> is on the other side of that coin.
>
> It interesting that Jeffrey Dhamer said he ate his victims because, "I
> wanted them to be a part of me." Think of that comment in the light of
> Maggies post on the cognitive stages in our evolution and the primary
> culture where the dead are eaten by friends and relatives as an act of
> honor. Maybe Jeffrey's evil was the result of some kind of confusion of an
> earlier form of consciousness with his normal modern existence. I think
> the idea is that we all recapitulate the evoltion of consciouness in our
> own cognitive development. Sometimes the natural unfolding of the mind is
> interrupted by sickness or trauma and the person gets stuck there. It
> seems a lot of mental illness includes regression or arrest in this way.
>
> Remember how Lila's break with sanity was demonstated by her regression to
> a former time in her life? She clung to the doll like a life preserver,
> believing it was her un-dead baby. She was denied the possibility of
> expressing her social level values when her baby and husband died. This
> doesn't fit the sin as misconception idea, but she was kind of an
> ignoramous. Instead, the true evil in Lila, if one can even say that about
> her, comes from failing to honor the social and intellectual values within
> herself. It seems any case of evil in the classic sense can be expressed
> in MOQ terms as a certain kind of a violation of the five moral codes.
>
> I only have some foggy ideas at this point, but I'd be happy to do a
> little homework if anybody is interested. It doesn't have to be a whole
> new thread. Anyway, I was strangely riveted to the scene in Lila where the
> author conducts a ritual to put Lila's doll to rest, a sort of ceremonial
> funeral for Lila's lost family. The ritual itself fascinates me, although
> I'm not sure what it means.. But even more that is something Pirsig said
> about the greats like Ghandi and MLK absorbed bad karma, rather than pass
> it on to others. The ritual he conducted was supposed to have unburdened
> Lila. He bore her sins? I think he was hinting at the savior motif,
> although I don't recall any reference to Christ. Of course, in ZAMM his
> son's name is Chistopher, which means "Christ-bearer". I saw a review of
> ZAMM that was published in a theological magazine and discussed the
> trinity! ( I presume the father, son and holy ghost were the narrator,
> Chris and Phaedrus, respectively.)
>
> Lithien? Anyone? Or is the whole topic too churchy and creepy?
>
> David
>
>
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