> I'd like to begin by thanking everyone for their time, because this is
> gonna be a long one. This is personal, but its also about ideas. The
> MOQ has helped to answer questions I've been asking for as long as I
> can remember; What in the world is going on? Why do people believe in
> irrational things like virgin mothers and coming back from the dead?
> How could Hitler be? Why did anyone follow him? In short, I always
> wanted to understand stupidity and evil.
>
> I was raised as a fundamentalist. My step-father was a Baptist
> preacher and my mom was a preacher's wife. I was saved, sang in the
> choir, spread the word, and went to church three times per week. I
> began to question the faith by the time I was 12 or so and had lots of
> debates with my step-dad. They sent me to an extremely conservative
> private college, but at least it wasn't Bob Jones University. At
> school I studied history, philosophy and literature, not because of
> some plan to work in a history store or a philosophy factory, but
> because I wanted to find out what "real" thinkers thought, not just
> preachers. In fact, Hitler was the topic of my senior thesis... Not
> that I ever imagined there was a connection between preachers and
> Hitler, its just that they both seemed kind of crazy to me. I became
> interested in talk-radio out of this same curiosity, wanting to
> understand what made wildly irrational people tick. As an eye-witness
> i can tell you, its no act, those ranting maniacs are quite sincere.
> And the egos. Oh. My. God. I know what you're thinking. But its not
> true. If my ego were that large I'd still be working in talk-radio.
> The same old questions have even brought me to this place and to this
> essay. My curiosity has actually been satisfied to a certain extent,
> and the MOQ is certainly a part of that good fortune. OK, that's the
> bio. My favorite passages are the one's that most succinctly answer my
> questions....
>
> To prevent this from being any longer than it has to be, I'll have to
> ask you to read between the lines a little, to see the connections for
> yourself and to keep that little bio in mind as we go.
>
> First, a passage or two from the end of chapter 13....
>
> "The structuring of morality into evolutionary levels suddenly gives
> shape to all kinds of blurred and confused moral ideas that are
> floating around in our present cultural heritage. ... Like the stuff
> Rigel was throwing at him this morning, the old Victorian morality.
> That was entirely within one code, the social code. Phaedrus thought
> that code was good as far as it went, but it didn't really go
> anywhere. It didn't know its origins and it didn't know its own
> destinations, and not knowing them it had to be exactly what it was:
> hopelessly static, hopelessly stupid, a form of evil in itself." ...
>
> Blurred and confused moral ideas! Yes, that's what wrong with the
> narrow-ness of fundamentalist morality. They are not wrong, so much as
> limited. It doesn't see any larger context and so it doesn't even
> understand itself. It's reasons are always unreasonable. "Because GOD
> says so"? What?
>
> "Everybody thinks those Victorian moral codes are stupid and evil, or
> old-fashioned at least, except maybe a few religious fundamentalists
> and ultra-right-wingers and ignorant uneducated people like that.
> That's why Rigel's sermon seemed so peculiar. Usually people like
> Rigel do their sermonizing in favor of whatever is popular. That way
> they're safe. Didn't he know all that stuff went out years ago? Where
> was he during the revolution of the sixties?"
>
> Pirsig wrote that before Rush Limbaugh came along. These days there
> are plenty of Rigels who say "mega-dittos" to those Victorian moral
> codes. And its no accident that such right-wingers are reacting to the
> sixties. Remember Newt Gingrich's phrase "counter-culture
> McGovernicks"? When they attack Clinton they are attacking the sixties
> and defending Victorian values. (THIS IS NOT A DEFENSE OF CLINTON. My
> vote went elsewhere.)Some of the most famous young conservatives have
> proudly declared themselves to be "neo-Victorians". Even the fashions
> of the time look fascists, black clothes and short, severe hair
> styles, and then there's the neo-fifties thing with suits, martinis,
> big cigars and swing dancing - with the "girls" in looong dresses.
> All this stupidity makes sense in light of the MOQ. The 90's made the
> 50's look like the 60's. Just before he died, Barry Goldwater had a
> good laugh with Bob Dole. "Now we're at the liberal end of the
> Republican party!" Laughed so hard he actually slapped his knee.
>
> "Where has he been during this whole century? That's what this whole
> century's been about, this struggle between intellectual and social
> patterns. That's the theme song of the 20th century."
>
> And its not just about bigots and bible-thumpers, not just about
> talk-radio or the 90's, its about the recent history of Western
> civilization! Ultimately it's about the evolution of reality! In light
> of the MOQ, those persistent questions don't just SEEM important to
> me, they really go to the heart of what's going on in the world. This
> theme song, based on the full emergence of intellectual values, is an
> event Pirsig compares to our ancestors leaving the ocean for dry land,
> a great evolutionary leap.
>
> And in chapter 22 Pirsig continues to explain the history of our
> century as a social hurricane... "When the social climate changes from
> preposterous social restraint of all intellect to a relative
> abandonment of all social patterns, the result is a hurricane of
> social forces. That hurricane is the history of the twentieth
> century."
>
> Not only does he say it explicitly, the centrality of this theme is
> also underscored in the whole framework of the novel. The captain is
> floating toward the ocean on the remains of a hurricane.
>
> Pirsig writes.... "A whole population, cut loose physically by the new
> technology... was also cut adrift morally and psychologically from
> the static social patterns of the Victorian past."
>
> Just around the time of WWI, Biographical writing was radically
> changed from a static portrait to a story of personal growth and
> evolution, the invention of cinema gave movement to images, planes
> took to the sky, cubism tried to capture time and movement with paint,
> and of course there was Einstein's relativity theory. We were cut
> loose and cut adrift in so many different ways. The whole world went
> into motion and it sickened some.
>
> "Phaedrus thought that no other historical or political analysis
> explains the enormity of these forces as clearly as does the MOQ. The
> gigantic power of socialism and fascism, which have overwhelmed this
> century, is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This
> conflict explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane
> search for power but as an all-consuming glorification of social
> authority and hatred of intellectualism."
>
> Pirsig says Hitler's anti-Semitism, anti-Communism, his persecution of
> intellectual freedom and his exaltation of the German volk were all
> fueled by this anti-intellectualism. And this seems to really give
> shape to politics in the US as well. The Klan's worst enemy is a
> commie-jew-fag, otherwise known as a Pinko. These were the targets of
> McCarthy's inquisition and in many of today's right-wing militia
> members. Those are the same targets in the racist novel that inspired
> the Oaklahoma City bombing. You don't hear much about it these days,
> but there was a huge fascist impulse in here in the 30's and the Klu
> Klux Klan ran many cities in the 20's. And even outside of politics,
> there is an anti-intellectual streak in America that is a mile wide.
> Remember when Pirsig mentions the MOVIE with the Chemistry professor
> who could not dance....
>
> Page 196 - "The audience howled with laughter. Except one."
>
> The one who did not laugh wanted to be a chemistry professor. They
> were laughing at him. What decent philosopher doesn't know the pain of
> that isolation? That's why intellectuals seem so lonely. They don't
> think intelligence is anything to mock. It feels unholy and low to
> them. Or maybe just a personal insult. Being a social klutz is a
> seperate issue. Social values are hostile to intellectuals, Hitler
> only demonstrated the most extreme case of this same hostility.
>
> But it isn't about intelligence or good schools. The neo-NAZI novelist
> who inspired Timothy McVeigh's mass murder used to be a top-notch
> Physics professor.(My father-in-law took a few of his classes.) He's
> got a very high IQ, but his values are social to the max, just like
> Hitler's values.
>
> ****************************************************************
>
> But there's something distinctly different about American social
> values. We're not completely European.
>
> Pirsig writes....
> "...the American personality has two components, European and Indian.
> The moral values that were replacing the old European Victorian ones
> were the moral values of American Indians: kindness to children,
> maximum freedom, openness of speech, love of simplicity, affinity for
> nature. Without any real awareness of where the new morals were coming
> from, the whole country was moving in a direction that it felt was
> right."
>
> This movement occured after WWI and we clearly saw a similar thing in
> the 60's. And if William James Sidis was right, Indian values helped
> to form the nation even earlier than the 1930's. 1630's is probably
> more like it. I'm a little disappointed in Pirsig for leaving the
> Africans out of this equation, but his point remains in tact even if
> we add them. Social Values from non-European sources have effected the
> American mind.
>
> "The new intellectualism looked to the common people as a source of
> cultural values rather than to the old Victorian European models.
> Artists and writers of the thirties...dug deep into the illiterate
> roots of white American culture to find the new morality, not
> understanding that it was this white illiterate American culture that
> was closest to the values of the Indian." (The western movie
> mythology; Butch and Sundance ARE Indians.)
>
> Alot of people know about the origins of American musical forms, but
> they're worth repeating here because they were born out of exactly the
> same conditions Pirsig describes, the illiterate roots of white
> America. Jazz was born in NewOrleans out of mixture of African and
> Indian, and then later whites. It traveled to Chicago, blah blah blah.
> Bluegrass was born in the back woods of Kentucky in the 30's when
> illiterate Scotts-Irish hillbillies encountered black railroad
> workers. And then there are the Cowboy folk singers like Hank Williams
> and Woody Guthrie. These forms continue to evolve and there is some
> pretty powerful magic in it. These "illiterate" forms tend to express
> the values that intellectuals love. Somehow this uneducated wisdom is
> the opposite of the racist Physicist. Cause it ain't about smarts, its
> about values.
> *************************************************************
>
> As the book concludes, at the end of the last chapter Pirsig
> describes...
>
> "...what Phaedrus called a KARMA dump. You invent a devil group, Jews,
> blacks or whites or capitalists or communists - it doesn't matter -
> then say that group is responsible for all your suffering, and then
> hate it and try to destroy it."
>
> "If you take all this karmic garbage and make yourself feel better by
> passing it on to others that's normal. That's the way the world works.
> But if you manage to absorb it and not pass it on, that's the highest
> moral conduct of all. That really advances everything, not just you.
> The whole world. If you look at the lives of some of the great moral
> figures of history - Christ, Lincoln, Gandi and others - you'll see
> that that's what they were really involved in, the cleansing of the
> world through the absorption of karmic garbage. They didn't pass it
> on. Their followers sometimes did, but they didn't."
>
> Then the idol speaks to the captain and tells him that he'd done
> exactly that for Lila, he had absorbed some of her karmic garbage by
> defending her and letting Rigel dislike him. He took the heat, so to
> speak.
>
> "You're the winner, you know," the idol said. "...by default."
> "How so?"
> "You did one moral thing on this whole trip, which saved you."
> "What was that?"
> "You told Rigel that Lila had Quality"
> "You mean in Kingston?"
> "Yes and the only reason you did that was because he caught you by
> surprize and you couldn't think of your usual intellectual answer, but
> you turned him around. He wouldn't have come here if it hadn't been
> for that. Before then he had no respect for her and a lot for you.
> After that HE HAD NO RESPECT FOR YOU, BUT SOME FOR HER. So you gave
> her something and that's what SAVED YOU. If it hadn't been for that
> one moral act you'd be headed down the coast tomorrow with a lifetime
> of Lila ahead of you."
>
> And I think the same message is in this old folk tune...
>
> No use crying
> talkin' to a stranger
> Naming the sorrows you've seen
> too many bad times
> too many sad times
> Nobody knows what you mean
>
> But if somehow you could
> pack up your sorrows
> and give them all to me
> you would loose them
> I know how to use them
> Give them all to me
>
> No use walkin'
> ramblin' in the shadows
> trailing a wandering star
> no one beside you
> no one to hide you
> And nobody knows what you are
>
> But if somehow you could
> pack up your sorrows
> and give them all to me
> you would loose them
> I know how to use them
> Give them all to me
>
>
>
------- End of forwarded message -------
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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