From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon May 09 2005 - 15:19:33 BST
Hi Ham, Anthony,
Ant opines:
> If the MOQ Discuss members appear to leaning to
> the liberal left I think that it’s only because these Buddhist orientated
> ideas of the MOQ are of generally higher quality than right-wing political
> ideas. Essentially, this is because the former takes a wider, global view
> of all of humanity (i.e. selfless orientated) while the latter is usually
> more concerned with promoting just the material interests of a minority
> (i.e. self/selfish orientated).
Don't you believe it, Ham. There have been a number of conservative
contributors to MOQ Discuss over the years. Like me, they have found
plenty in Pirsig's philosophy to support right-wing ideas, the most
notable being the MOQ's view that freedom is the highest value of all. Few
conservatives have time to contribute regularly to this site because they
are fully engaged in doing and have little time left over for talking.
Ant continues:
> Furthermore, as I have noted to Platt
> previously, the trick is not to be too hung up on supporting any one
> particular ideology (such as capitalism or socialism) but to take a step
> back and pragmatically assess the merits of each political system. Hence,
> Pirsig’s attempt to combine capitalism’s use of free markets (in the social
> realm) with socialism’s emphasis on economic intellectual control and sense
> of fairness.
Pirsig attempted to "combine" capitalism and socialism and proposed
intellectual control of the economy in the name of "fairness?." That's
news to me. Can you supply some quotes to support that conclusion?
> It also seems reasonable to me that this essential “substance” (of beauty
> and other values) was creating the universe a long time before there were
> any human beings around to measure them and divide them into subjects and
> objects (or good and bad).
Here, here.
> Nearly all the fundamentalist weirdoes in the world seem to
> be both right-wing and either Christian or Muslim.
Except for all those left-wing feminist and environmentalist wackos. :-)
> Moreover, beauty or Quality or enlightenment is not something that can be
> completely “nailed down”/defined in the formal sense that you seem to
> require. There comes a point where you have to stop discussing and
> analysing these things and start experiencing them Dynamically e.g. to stop
> talking about beauty (as an art historian) and to start trying to paint
> beautifully (as an artist).
Truer (higher quality) words were never spoken!
Best,
Platt
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