Hi Marco,
you wrote:
>I've read your commentary of the SODV paper, and I think I agree with a
>lot of your thoughts. Just I don't know if this was exactly the month
>focus, I've been waiting in vain for an intervention from Richard....
The focus is on, i think, making an overall picture of the MOQ and one
such picture was presented by Pirsig himself in the SODV paper, where
the relation between MOQ, Science and Art was pictured.
>I strongly agree. And here comes my thesis that we have not still really
>entered the intellectual era. Up to now, intellect has reached a certain
>freedom from social patterns, but really intellect is not the leader of
>evolution. Actually, the most successful intellectual applications
>today are about technology (IMO, the art of solving the social basic
>problem, that is to keep at bay biological life). Not certainly about
>philosophy...
Yes, intellect is not in charge, as intellectuals should have
realised by now that Science and Technology have not by themselves
led to a higher Quality (Moral) of human life. Rather, if you study
history, Science and technology have emerged NOT out of man's desire
for a moral existence but out of the basically immoral desire to
conquer, dominate or wage war. Not as an attempt to understand nature
but to control and dominate nature. Mankind has yet to comprehend the
fact that man cannot and does not control nature, it is nature that
is and will always be in control. Science has yet to discover this
truth and announce it. Even the advancement in avionics,electronics,
nuclear technology, computing, etc has been motivated by the need
for military domination. All other applications, like information
technology, entertainment have been secondary offshoots.
The biggest lie that has been perpetuated is that Science is a search
for the truth. Truth for whom and for what ?
Art has tried to give man glimpses of the Good so that the moral force
latent in every being can awaken. Tragically this has only been
taken as only a liesurely activity. Rhetoric - the art of language
should have been the intellectual's forte.Instead dialectic precision
is the intellectuals tool today and so has to rely completely on
Science to figure out anything at all. Rhetoric is used only for
scoring political points.
>IMO science needs intuition, as well. And actually, science is an art.
>It is creative and methodic. The actual divorce is not science/art, it's
>art/technology (offered by Pirsig in ZAMM, as you know). I think this
>divorce is probably definitive, as technology is the intellectual
>application for social purposes, while art has been able (to a certain
>extent) to get rid of society. It is not technology which has abandoned
>art, it is vice versa! Technology has become awful when artists
>abandoned it to engineers... A possible fusion should come when people
>will pretend firstly beautiful products, and possibly useful. Only that
>day engineers will be necessarily firstly artists...
There is a divergence of opinion here. Science does not care for
intuition or art.It tries to shut out intuition and at best only uses
creative intuition to establish or prove "truths".Thus intuition
is wholly subservient to scientific methods and goals. Any intuitive
idea that is not supported by scientific methods and goals is not
even given a second look.And what are the goals of Science? - to
hunt for "truths" that can be used for political domination and
control by the political masters of the scientists.
A possible fusion is needed not in products but in attitudes.
Science has proven to be destructive and art has
not been so. Art should have dominated science, and only then the
application of science ie technology could possibly have been non-
destructive. But before everything else, comes our attitudes and
values. If the attitudes and values are all wrong, nothing will
subsequently work out right. That is the tragedy - having more
value for Science and technology and less for nature is the final
and fatal act that has sealed mankind's fate. I can't see how we
can blame art for this or what the artists could have done. Fight
wars with pens and brushes ?
It is not that art and artists have not tried to reach out to
the intellectuals and scientists to examine their values and
beliefs, but tragically every attempt has met with failure.
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