From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Tue Apr 13 2004 - 22:34:10 BST
Dear David B. and (at the end) Horse,
You wrote 3 Apr 2004 16:02:47 -0700:
'OK. Fair enough.'
in reply to my:
'It's not your use of the term "junk" that bothers me. It's polarization on
this list. "Offensiveness" of the words used is not a good measure of
polarization.'
Let's leave it at that. I didn't intend to criticize your overall behaviour
on this list, so I won't go into your 'exhibits'.
I think I'm generous and sympathetic enough with respect to the content of
what of you are trying to say by translating what you describe as a conflict
between social and intellectual patterns of value into a conflict between
intellectual patterns of value that support respectively want to change
social patterns of value and ... by taking by and large the same side in
this conflict as you do.
Your wrote:
'Wim, dude, that's just not true.'
WHAT is not true? That I take Pirsig's descriptions of conflicts between
social and intellectual patterns of value in terms of a 'war' as
metaphorical?? Or that metaphors have limited applicability?? The many
examples in 'Lila' of Pirsig using the 'war' metaphor (in spite of the
discreteness of levels that is explained with another metaphor for their
relation: software and hardware with only a limited 'machine code language'
as link) in my view support my idea that he may have been slightly
overextending his use of it.
I'm glad you now agree with Platt and me that 'one would be going too far to
say that conservatives are ALWAYS defending social level values or to say
that liberal are ALWAYS defending intellectual values'.
Not being American I'm not competent to discuss exactly WHERE (American)
conservatives do and don't defend social patterns of value. Neither do I
know TO WHAT EXTENT (American) liberals are really proponents of
intellectual patterns of value (and a few social patterns of value). They
could occasionally just be ruining valuable and needed social patterns of
value without offering good alternatives (in other words: they could value
degeneration instead of progress).
So I leave that discussion to you Americans, hoping that the agreement you
now found with Platt will enable you to be 'nice and polite' to him. (-:
You also wrote:
'The problem is that you're using Pirsig's terms to refer to your own
ideas.'
I'll think of better terms to refer to my definitions of the 3rd and 4th
levels.
You continued:
'Its just that moq.org is about Pirsig's MOQ.'
I don't agree and have argued that on the MF list. What do you think Horse?
Should we take a vote?
You propose to:
'present ideas that help to explain or expand upon Pirsig's ideas and the
issues he treats'.
That's exactly what I would describe as 'philosophologizing'.
You write that my alternative understanding of mainly the 3rd and 4th levels
doesn't work for you. Neither does yours for me. So be it. We will have
plenty of occasions in the future to try to understand each others
understandings better, to see how they can be applied to the same situation
and to re-evaluate their value. I hope to do so in a constructive way.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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