From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Aug 01 2004 - 01:21:00 BST
All MOQers:
Someone, I think it was Joe, said that the following quote is "unnecessary"
and asked "who doesn't want to be a hero?"
182 "The MOQ sees heroism as a rather low-level social quality that can be
without intellectual and Dynamic merit. Soldiers are often considered heroic
when all they have done is sit where an artillery shell came down."
There is a religious quality to the sentiments and attitudes attached to
dead soldiers and so I'm not as all surprized at Pirsig characterization of
such "heroism" as "a rather low-level social quality". The sentiments and
attitudes are nearly unassailable in normal conversation and is entirely out
of bounds in our political discourse. When the intellectual quality of
Bush's foreign policy is questioned and criticized, one effective defense is
to point out that we HAVE TO support our heroic troops even if we dislike
the policy that put them in harm's way. Its ridiculous and specious, but
quite effective. It doesn't answer the questions so much as shut down the
conversation through emotional manipulation. You'd never hear a military
leader describe soldiers as consumable bodies to feed the giant, but Pirsig
does. You'd never hear a veteran say that all the medals and ribbons and
ceremonies for the fallen are just celebrity devices that mirror the wishes
of the social level, but Pirsig does. And for those who fail to buy into the
whole patriotic war hero stuff are usually accused of "hating America". But
that's really not it. Its the unquestioning glorification of social
authority, the death, destruction and lost limbs that bugs us so much. I
think that the thoughtless John Wayne patriots freak out when people point
this out because the civic religion that surrounds our war dead tends to
hide, obscure or romanticize some very ugly realities and they do not
appreciate when the covers are pulled back. They prefer to not see all that
and resent those who want it revealed.
But notice that Pirsig said heroism CAN BE without intellectual and Dynamic
merit. One has to suppose that it CAN BE with such merit too. If fact, he
elsewhere makes a case that John Browne's truth keeps marching on. And he
wasn't even a soldier. But most standards, he was a terrorist who agitation
lead to a bloody civil war. And this was a guy who is known to have killed
an entire family, sticking the father a few extra times to be sure. So you
never know. I think Pirsig is objecting to the vacant eyed flag wavers, not
those who genuinely fight for something positive. There are acts of heroism
in this world and physical courage is important even for philosophers, let
alone soldiers, cops, firefighters and the like. But shooting a gun or
getting killed in NOT NECESSARILY heroic. We can't say things like that in
the letters of condolence went send to the family of the dead, but most of
the time the ultimate sacrifice served no good purpose. Our civic religion
and the attendant patriotism is designed to make this horror bearable, but
that doesn't make it true.
And finally, I think this thought about heroism is quite relevant to the
issue of Pirsig's anti-theisitc views. It seems that moderns war heros are
an only slightly secularized version of the same attitudes and sentiments
that sent Europeans on Crusades a thousand years ago. This ancient and
deadly thing has hardly changed in the wake of modernity, except soldiers
have nukes instead of arrows. That's why it is time to see through these
"rather low-level social" values and adopt a more reasonable attitude toward
war and heroism.
Thanks,
dmb
"Both he and the MOQ are expressing what Aldous Huxley called "The Perennial
Philosophy", which is perennial, I believe, because it happens to be true."
RMP
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