From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Apr 03 2003 - 18:26:17 BST
Hi Steve, (and Rick please take note below)
> > We still use "more moral" the same way though, because when you say
> > something is "more moral" you are presumably asserting that most people
> > would agree with you about what to choose, at least once you've had a
>chance
> > to explain your understanding of the situation, right?
>
>Not at all. When I say something is more moral, I mean it actually is
>better--as if quality is real. If you can't make this basic assumption, I
>wonder what value you could possibly find in reading Pirsig. Without it, I
>don't think we have enough common ground to make discussion of the MOQ
>fruitful.
I found some evidence that Pirsig uses "moral" like I do, what do you think
of this:
Lila chapter 26
"Phaedrus recognized that there's nothing *immoral* in a culture not being
ready to accept something Dynamic."
Now, assuming he uses Dynamic in the same way you do, as in, "better", he is
explicitly saying that better is not automatically moral, or "more moral".
He is using it in the way I use it, saying that what the culture does is
moral, what most people do is moral. So, since you were wondering, I
possibly found some value in reading Pirsig right there.
I want to clarify something I believe about morality that may bring us
closer together: I do believe that in thinking about what is the moral
thing to do, one should think about respected leaders and wise elders more
than being influenced by polls of what people actually do. Morality was
invented before polls were possible, and polls aren't good for morality,
they spread it out and muddy the waters, leaving people with no idea what is
moral, and having to turn to ethicists for direction. This is the great
wound Kinsey inflicted, a turning point in our culture's morality. What we
had previously not talked about, he actually took a (skewed) poll and, with
the media's help, showed how what we really do is not what our culture says
we do, and lo and behold, those things started to seem more acceptable and
more and more people started doing them. What he did was immoral, it was
immoral to discuss immoral acts in general, or ask people about them,
because it was understood that immoral behavior snowballs towards morality
when people start to admit to it. It is why priests don't write books about
what they hear in the confessional. One of the purposes of shame is to keep
people from discussing immoral behavior so as to keep it immoral. Private
behavior should be kept private, not exhibited publicly for thrills.
Some more thoughts about facts and burden of proof:
Pirsig, earlier in chapter 26
"It never occurred to him to think he was in a whole different harbor!
It was a parable for students of scientific objectivity. Wherever the
chart disagreed with his observations he rejected the observation and
followed the chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew it had built
up a static filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information
that did not fit. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.
If this were just an individual phenomenon it would not be so serious.
But it is a huge cultural phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build
up whole cultural intellectual patterns based on past "facts" which are
extremely selective. When a fact comes in that does not fit the pattern we
don't throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact
has to kep hammering and hammering and hammering, sometimes for centuries,
before maybe one or two people will see it. And then these one or two have
to start hammering on others for a long time before they see it too."
On Facts:
Notice that Pirsig puts the past facts in quotation marks, but those "facts"
could be any of our current facts. Any fact could be festooned with
quotation marks at any time. Pirsig seems to imply that that new fact that
didn't fit the pattern is right, but that is a matter for the culture to
decide, perhaps centuries later. The contradictory fact may turn out to be
the "fact", and the original fact could remain true.
On Burden of Proof:
Notice that Pirsig says that a contradictory fact "has to keep hammering",
and that the one or two people "have to start hammering ON OTHERS for a long
time". If the burden of proof were on the existing patterns, the culture
would accept every new fact that came along and throw out the pattern every
time. That is just not the way it is. If you feel you've got a new fact,
start hammering. Maybe in a few centuries your "fact" will lose its
quotation marks, if other people see it too. But to simply say that static
patterns in general are bad and a new fact deserves to replace the patterns
because the new fact is "Dynamic" is not hammering, it is just trying to
confuse and demoralize people so you can sneak the "fact" in through the
back door before people even see that it has quotation marks around it.
Hammering means trying to provide a burden of proof. He says "the solution
is not to condemn the culture as stupid but to look for those factors that
will make the new information acceptable: the keys."
On Static Filters:
Pirsig implies that he escaped from his static filter when he learned the
"truth" that he was in Cleveland harbor. But he still had a static filter:
now it was that he was in Cleveland harbor! There is no way to escape from
static filters, the truth is what we see through static filters that agree
with everyone else's static filters. Phaedrus's problem was that his static
filter was wrong, not that he had one. When he replaced it with the common
culturally correct filter, he saw the truth. Believing is seeing. What we
believe is true, is what is true. What we believe is our static set of
beliefs, implanted in us by the culture we are immersed in.
Pirsig is making complaints here about unfortunate tendencies that we humans
have been burdened with, and it may appear that he's saying that now, with
the MoQ (which he thought of as a key), we can all shed our static filters,
learn to see the more dynamic fact without waiting for centuries, and start
believing what we see. But the MoQ is not a key. The MoQ won't get people
who believe they are in Cleveland to think they aren't in Cleveland just
because you tell them about Lila. The MoQ won't make seeing believing,
believing will always be seeing. In those paragraphs above, he is not just
lamenting about our present condition, he is describing our constant
condition, he is describing reality. Believing IS seeing. Facts HAVE to
hammer. That won't change.
Johnny M.
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