From: Ant McWatt (antmcwatt@hotmail.co.uk)
Date: Fri May 20 2005 - 20:52:07 BST
Michael Hamilton stated May 19th 2005:
“The MOQ says that the good to which truth is subordinate is intellectual
and Dynamic usefulness, not social usefulness.”
I need to illustrate this. Nazi ideology placed the Volksgemeinschaft
(“people's community”, i.e. social value) as the highest moral objective.
Therefore, the practicality to which they subordinated truth was pure social
value. Hence, their discouragement of intellectual development, and instead
their indoctrination of children with the “correct” (i.e. socially
conformist) beliefs. This is a clear example of intellectual value (truth)
being shackled to social value. It is this kind of practicality that the
social/intellectual division of the MOQ disqualifies from pragmatism.
Ant McWatt comments:
Michael,
Thank you for your recent excellent posts on George Galloway, “Dynamic
usefulness” and the distinction between intellectual and social
practicality. Your illustration of the latter reminded of Pirsig’s view on
leadership which I’ve been looking for an excuse to post for some time:
“X sounds like a very decent person but his talk about leadership gives me a
creepy Wagnerian feeling. In Minnesota, where I come from… the population is
heavily Germanic in ethnic descent. (I’m one of them.) I heard a lot of that
word in grade school before World War II where they were always talking
about training us to be leaders. Then the German word for leader, ‘führer,’
dominated the scene and seemed to put the whole idea of leadership out of
favor, and I was glad to see it go. Talk about leadership places social
patterns as the thing to think about rather than the quality and ideas that
the people should follow whether there are any ‘leaders’ or not. Saddam
Hussein has been a leader in every sense of the word. Albert Einstein has
acted as though he never heard of the word.”
(Robert Pirsig to Anthony McWatt, October 24th 2003)
Ant McWatt comments:
Of course, it was ideas such as leadership in Nazi Germany which promoted
social patterns (such as conformity to what a leadership might recommend).
This, in turn, encouraged the silencing of intellectual dissent (by the
ethnic Germans) and therefore facilitated the persecution of the Jews.
I notice that in some recent MOQ Discuss posts, that Ham has stated
(incorrectly) that SOM is the only way to metaphysically divide reality
(modernist view) and that Matt K (incorrectly) thinks the intellect-social
division is not particularly useful (post-modernist view). I think the MOQ
analysis of Nazi Germany highlights the value of recognising that the social
level (such as celebrity) is distinct and secondary to intellectual values
(such as truth and justice) and, therefore, (via emphasising this
difference) helps us (i.e. the human race) in not repeating the same error
twice.
Best wishes,
Anthony
www.anthonymcwatt.co.uk
=====================================
In 1967 when George Harrison visited San Francisco, a young hippy came over
to him and called out: “You are our leader, George. You know where it’s
at!”
Harrison replied:
“It’s you who should be leading yourself. You don’t want to be following
leaders – me or anyone else.” (Wills, 2003)
.
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