From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Jun 28 2004 - 16:05:25 BST
Hi Dan, All:
Several times Dan has tried to make the point that the MOQ makes a
distinction between race at the biological level and race (or racism) at
the social level. I agree with Dan's position.
In Chap. 24 of Lila, Pirsig states quite clearly that a paralysis of
intellect has occurred because SOM "lumps biological man and cultural man
together." As a result, the current intellectual fashion is to claim it's
immoral to criticize a group because of its cultural characteristics. In
other words, in today's version of the intellectual status quo, known also
as "political correctness," all cultures are morally equal, i.e.a notion
succinctly summed up as "multiculturalism."
Pirsig says this intellectually fashionable idea (everyone's equal both
biologically and culturally) is wrong. He says genetic characteristics,
such as skin color, are not changeable and therefore it's immoral to speak
against a group on that basis alone. But, cultural characteristics are
another thing. They are changeable and should be spoken out against if
they are immoral. He summarizes:
"Blacks have no right to violate social codes and call it "racism" when
someone tries to stop them, if those codes are not racist codes. That is
slander. The fight to sustain social codes isn't a war of blacks vs.
whites or Hispanics vs. blacks, or poor people vs. rich people or even
stupid people against intelligent people, or any other of all the other
possible cultural confrontations. . It's war of society against patterns
of reason and patterns of biology that have been set loose by the mistakes
of this century.
"From the hotel window, looking out across the park, it seemed as if you
could see from the north, from the ghetto areas there, a dreadful night,
an eclipse of social patterns by invading unchecked biological patterns,
closing in and gradually putting New York into a sleep from which it might
never recover. It isn't a war of races or of cultures. It's war of society
against patterns of reason and patterns of biology that have been set
loose by the mistakes of this century."
It's clear that Pirsig would disagree with statements like, "Race doesn't
exist at the biological level." If anything, he would say that race ONLY
exists at the biological level -- in biological man -- that is, in a
person's "genetic characteristics." Since these can't be changed (at least
for now) it's immoral to make judgments about a person simply because of
her looks. But, it is not immoral to judge a person if she commits crimes.
If we allow this distinction between biological and cultural levels, Dan's
mention or an article describing genetic research being done on
hemochromatosis that occurs in Swedes and sickle cell anemia which occurs
in Africans is entirely relevant. It says it's morally legitimate for
scientists to consider race at the genetic level in their pursuit of
knowledge.
Finally, when someone says that such and such is true (like there's no
such thing as race) based on overwhelming scientific evidence, I remind
myself that the overwhelming majority of scientists consider the MOQ idea
of moral evolution completely wacko. Fortunately, science itself admits
it's never the last word on anything. :-)
Best,
Platt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jun 28 2004 - 16:48:28 BST