From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Apr 24 2005 - 19:32:12 BST
Mark, Arlo and all MOQers:
These issues were raised in the "Access to Quality" thread, but I changed
the name to better reflect the actual content.
dmb had said to Ham:
...........Do you not see how murderous the reactionaries have been for the
last several hundred years? Do you not see that the Hitlers, the Stalins,
the Bin Ladins and the Pat Robersons of the world are extremely destructive?
The one thing these wildly different characters all have in common is an
anti-intellectual, anti-Modern stance at the heart of it all. So I'm saying
that one of Pirsig's BEST moves is to make a distinction between the social
and intellectual levels. Its a tool that allows us to sort out all kinds of
issues.
Mark said to Arlo:
Just want to say I appreciate your recent posts in response to Platt.
I believe your analysis is right on, and would add only that when we
focus on the left-right, lib-con, theist-atheist splits as the cause
of social problems, we are playing into the hands of entrenched
power. As you've suggested, real power wielded by elite minorities
feeds the flames of these red-herring dichotomies. The reason is
obvious: Every second we spend focused on false causes is time taken
from useful analysis and action against the real problem.
dmb says:
I appreciate it too. In terms of political perspective, I think both of you
guys (Arlo and Mark) are "spot on", as the Brits like to put it. But having
said that, I'd have to disagree a little bit too. First of all I would like
to point out that putting Pat Robertson in the same category with Hitler and
Stalin was not meant to imply that christian fundametalists are busy
building their own concentration camps or gulags. I mean, if I had said that
Pat Robertson was a genocidal maniac you would be right to dismiss me as a
dude with no sense of perspective or proportion. Please notice the phrase
"wildly different characters" in my description.
Secondly, For the most part I agree that "entrenched power" uses the culture
war and hot-button issues to divide and conquer. But I have to disagree here
a little bit too. Or rather, I think that there is something quite real
underneath these debates, behind those "red-herring dichotomies". Basically,
I think most of it is driven by an evolutionary struggle, one described
quite well in LILA. The intellectual and social levels are at war and this
is what I like to try to show you, gents. I have posted on this issue many,
many times and so I was a little frustrated that it seemed to go past you,
but then it occured to me that most of that work was done here before you
guys arrived here.
On the opening page of chapter 22, Pirsig says...
"When the social climate changes from preposterous social restraint of all
intellect to a relative abandonment of all social patterns, the result is a
hurricane of social forces. That hurricane is the history of the 20th
century.
There had been other comparable times, Phaedrus supposed. The day the
first protozoans decided to get together to form a metazoan society. Or the
day the first freak fish, or whatever-it-was, decided to to leave the water.
Or, within historical time, the day Socrates died to establish the
indepedence of intellectual patterns from their social origins. Or the day
Descartes decided to start with himself as an ultimate source of reality.
These were days of evolutionary transformation. And like most days of
transformation, no one at the time had any idea of what was being
transformed."
Likewise, near the end of chapter 21, Pirsig writes...
"What distinguishes the pattern of values called Victorian from the post-WW
1 period that followed is, according to the MOQ, a cataclysmic shift in
levels of static value; an earthquake in values, an earthquake of such
enormous consequence that we are still stunned by it, so stunned that we
haven't yet figured out what has happened to us. The advent of both
democratic and communistic socialism and the fascist reaction to them has
been the consequence of that earthquake."
And in chapter 22 we also read...
"Phaedrus thought that no other historical or political analysis explains
the enormity of these forces as clearly as does the MOQ. The giganitic power
of socialism and fascism, which have overwhelmed this (20th) century, is
explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This conflict explains the
driving force behind Hitler not as an insane search for power but as an
all-consuming glorification of social authority and hatred of
intellectualism. His anti-Semitism was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His
hatred of communists was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His exaltation of
the German volk was fueled by it. His fanatic persecution of any kind of
intellectual freedom was driven by it.
In the U.S. the economic and social upheaval was not so great as in
Europe, but Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, nevertheless, became the
center of a lesser storm between social and intellecual forces."
Pirsig gets very specific in these two chapters. He names names and
ideologies so that reading them in full will make it hard for any student of
history to miss the point. Guys like Platt remain utterly incorrigable on
this issue and only serve to confuse matters, but I suspect that good
liberals like you can already see what I'm getting at. And of course we are
still dealing with this same conflict today. I suppose its unnecessary to
point out that the current administration is thorougly anti-intellectual.
Bush's second inaugural address springs to mind, where democracy and freedom
were described in terms of God's gift to the world instead of a product of
the European Enlightenment. Or consider the war in Iraq, which has become a
matter of good and evil, a christian crusade and part of a quest for global
domination. Not to mention the fact that Jesus is George's favorite
philosopher. Notice their attack on dissent, on the remaining vestigaes of
the New Deal, and the Republican aversion to scientific consensus on global
warming, evolution, and facts in general.
The longer posts sometimes take too long to get through so I won't try to
spell out all the details. I suppose this post will raise as many questions
as it answers, but I hope it is just the start of a long discussion. There
is pleanty of room for debate about who and what best represents the two
sides in this evolutionary struggle, but I wanted to make a basic
distinction just to get things started. It seems to me that there are
conservatives and theists among us who do not yet see where this line has
been drawn and this really bums me out.
As a student of intellectual history, one who wrote his thesis on Hilter,
who has struggle for decades to grasp the meaning of such nightmares, I have
to agree with Phaedrus. "No other historical or political analysis explains
the enormity of these forces as clearly as does the Metaphysics of Quality."
Thanks,
dmb
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