From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Dec 10 2004 - 13:50:54 GMT
Arlo:
P:
> >"The instrument of conversation between society and biology has always
> >been a policeman or a soldier and his gun." (Lila, 24)
> >
> >You don't need soldiers to control sex or alcohol and drug abuse. You need
> >soldiers to kill those who threaten society with physical and
> >psychological destruction by using biological patterns of physical
> >violence.
A:
> I'm still not quite sure I follow your reasons. The police are certainly
> used to "control" drug use and sex (prostitution, for example). And they
> certainly use guns. The fact that we call them "officers" and not
> "soldiers" is an arbitrary use of language, isn't it?
No. Pirsig obviously makes a distinction between police and soldiers.
Police fight internal biological threats to society; the military fights
external threats.
> Also, I don't see how terrorists are threatening to "destroy society" in
> toto? I could see the argument being made that what they are threatening to
> do is to destroy our static social patterns and replace them with others
> (or somewhat more appropriately, to remove the impact of our static social
> patterns from their static social patterns). But I have never felt that the
> goal of terrorism was to destroy "society", and revert back to individuals
> roaming the wilderness. They WANT society, just one different than exists
> now, right? So they are not advocating destruction of the social layer from
> human existence, or do you feel they are?
They are dedicated to destroying our free society, replacing it with a
totalitarian society.
> But I'm not sure you answered my biggest question? How does participating
> in terrorism increase biological quality? Every other "biological" level
> issue I can think of (that society represses) is repressed simply because
> if it weren't repressed its high biological quality would threaten the
> social fabric. Without the social level repressing terrorism, are you
> saying we'd all become suicide bombers because it has high biological
> quality?
Physical violence (murder) threatens the social fabric. Totalitarian
societies depend on physical violence, i.e., biological terrorism, to
survive.
> I may be missing something here, but I still think this is more of a
> conflict of static social patterns than biological-social. Using your words
> above... this is a conflict between opposing static social patterns, with
> each side using physical and psychological destruction by using biological
> patterns of physical violence. How do you disagree with this?
Do you think all social patterns are morally equal, that a free society is
as good as a totalitarian society? I hope not.
Platt
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