Rob Stillwell and followers of the evil thread:
Pirsig would agree that experience is the main thing. In fact he says
Dynamic Quality is the "primary empirical reality". But make no mistake,
one can "experience" reading a book. Fresh air on a sunny day is just
another experience. In either case its just a question of one's
open-ness to the experience, regardless of how dry or cerebral it seems
to Rob.
There IS a danger of using the levels to justify pre-conceptions and
prejudices. I think you're right to point it out. Maybe you've noticed
the connections between Pirsig's work and that of William James and his
friend C.S. Peirce? They were pragmatists and so is Pirsig. So one of
the tests to determine the "quality" of an idea, or anything else, is to
look at the results of it in the "real world". By this test, the NAZIs
were obvious failures. So even if you could argue that their's was a
valid intellectual level movement, we can conclude, from experience,
that it was not moral. And I think its safe to say that nearly any
authoritarian government is immoral in the MOQ because they preserve the
"static" with force and violence.
If that's not enough, Pirsig says explicitly in LILA that Fascism is
immoral due to its attempt to replace intellectual values with social
values.
But you aren't seriously defending the NAZIs, are you? It doesn't take a
Liberal bias, or any moral courage, to condem the NAZIs. Judgementalism
is a bad thing, like prejudice. But you don't mean to suggest that one
shouldn't make distictions of any kind?
My view of the impeachment trial in the light of what Pirsig says about
the Victorians and fascism shouldn't be mistaken for support of Clinton.
I did not vote for him and I don't care for his policies. I don't think
its my own political bias, so much as a reading of recent U.S. history.
But that's all just context and support material and we needn't leave
the MOQ at all the examine the situation.
BIOLOGICAL VALUES - Sexual pleasure. (not contested here or in the
trial)
SOCIAL VALUES - Loyalty, Fidelity, Honesty, Trust, etc.
INTELLECTUAL VALUES - Legal and Political principles like privacy, due
process, equal enforcement, proportionality, and the logical
consequences in the domestic and geopolitical context.
So who is on the side of what in our national drama? Isn't it obvious?
Notice how the House prosecutors repeatly use phrases like "sacred oath"
and "sacred duty" in their proceedings? Notice how they talk about God
and honor and ancient traditions? For a conservative view of
conservatives read George Nash's "the conservative intellectual movement
in America. He describes a lot of books and think tanks, but very few
ideas outside of ecomonics. The entire ideology is predicated on the
views of anti-communist theologians and other old fashioned moralizers.
The House Republicans hold the line on that same ideology, many of them
consciously and explicitly. Not that we don't need a conservative,
stabilizing force in society. Its a matter of balance. Watch out when
the conservative become radical or revolutionary. Now he has become a
reactionary. And judging from historical experience, thats always bound
to be bloody and immoral.
David
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