Platt, and all eventually interested
(I have abandoned the various threads on terrorism as I don't want to be
considered a "leftist propaganda" seller. Just, I'd like to know how it happens
that leftist ideas are propaganda, while rightist ideas not..... )
Platt wrote:
>
> Pirsig wrote:
>
> "Now, it should be stated at this point that the Metaphysics of Quality
> supports this dominance of intellect over society. It says intellect is a
> higher level of evolution than society; therefore, it is a more moral level
> than society. It is better for an idea to destroy a society than it is for a
> society to destroy an idea. But having said this, the Metaphysics of
> Quality goes on to say that science, the intellectual pattern that has
> been appointed to take over society, has a defect in it. The defect is that
> subject-object science has no provision for morals. Subject-object
> science is only concerned with facts. Morals have no objective reality.
[...]
> A major theme of the MOQ is that Q-Intellect's command of society will
> ultimately lead to disaster (as it has in Cuba and the Soviet Union)
> because SOM lacks the conceptual ability to determine right from
> wrong. Intellect does not comprehend much less appreciate society's
> vital role in preventing the biological use of physical force to attain
> one's ends (otherwise known as murder, rape, pillaging and
> terrorism). Thus we see arguments to the effect that economic
> inequality is a justification for mass murder, and that if the "haves" will
> only succumb to blackmail from the "have nots" then we can all live
> happily ever after. Such reasoning only goes to prove Pirsig's warning:
> "Intellect has a defect in it."
>
Platt, actually there's a defect here and it is that you end your post writing,
BETWEEN QUOTES: "Intellect has a defect in it", while Pirsig does not write
that. Actually, Pirsig writes: "science, the intellectual pattern that has been
appointed to take over society, has a defect in it. The defect is that
subject-object science has no provision for morals". Actually, you are equating
Intellect and S/O science. Pirsig NEVER does it.
As you are seemingly equating SOM and Intellect, I just remind that "SOM =
Intellect" is Bo's SOLAQI. I'm not going to sell again my "propaganda" against
SOLAQI, as it's not the time and the place. Just, let me say that SOLAQI is Bo's
trademark, not Pirsig's, and that Bo recognizes that his idea is a possible
evolution of the Pirsig's MOQ, but it's not Pirsig's position.
Back to the MOQ, what I can understand from the Pirsig's quotes you offer, is
that:
a. Pirsig's worn is about S/O science, not about intellect.
b. Intellect and S/O science are not the same. It seems to me that Pirsig is
saying that science is one possible intellectual pattern, and that there could
be other patterns that have never been used to dominate society, up to now.
c. Pirsig never says that, on the other end, society has no defects. Quite the
contrary, I'd say. IMHO blaming intellect is, using Roger's words, blaming the
solution for the problem.
My point about S/O science has always been that it has been developed to (sort
of) demonstrate to society that it is good to let the intellect free. Actually,
where science is free to pursue freely the knowledge and the control of nature,
societies are more prospering. A wonderful paradigm for that is the Manhattan
project. Many of the scientists that helped the USA to develop the A-Bomb (and
all the related consequent technologies) escaped from Germany and Italy. The
Manhattan Project has been a game in which both society and scientists gained
value: the bomb on one side, and an increased freedom of research on another
side. In other words science and especially technologies are (sort of) a
necessary fee intellect has to pay to buy freedom. And such a game is very
productive only within a free society.
This point is IMO well supported from these words:
"it is possible to see that intellect has functions that predate science and
philosophy. The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover an
ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its
historical purpose has been to help a society find food, detect danger, and
defeat enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it
invents for this purpose. [...] Therefore, to the question. "What is the purpose
of all this intellectual knowledge?" the Metaphysics of Quality answers, "The
fundamental purpose of knowledge is to Dynamically improve and preserve
society". Knowledge has grown away from this historic purpose and became and end
in itself [...] and this growing away from original purposes toward greater
Quality is a moral growth. But those original purposes are still there. "
(Lila, chapter 24)
The original purpose can't be abandoned, so intellect has the moral duty "to
find food, detect danger, and defeat enemies", and "to Dynamically improve and
preserve society". I'd say that Technology and Politics are possibly good
intellectual applications for these ... "social" purposes of intellect.
Then , the intellectual level of the MOQ can't be simply science, technology,
rationality, politics . All what's about our freedom from society is intellect.
That is like to say: all what's against our freedom from society is society.
This is the description of the beginning of the intellectual era Pirsig offers:
"A whole population, cut loose physically by the new technology from farm to
city, from South to North, and from East to West Coast, was also cut adrift
morally and psychologically from the static social patterns of Victorian past.
People hardly knew what to do with themselves. "Flappers", airplanes, bathing
beauty contests, radio, free love, movies, "modern" art.... suddenly the door
had been sprung on a Victorian jail of staleness and conformity they had hardly
known was there, and the elation at the new technological and social freedom was
dizzying."
(Lila, chapter 22).
(The same elation I see in the documentaries showing Italy after WWII and
fascism. )
You see, not only technology. Even modern art, freedom to move... and beauty
contests! And free love!! That's why I say that terrorism (not only the latest
events, all the terroristic events Horse reminds us) is a crime against the
intellectual level. Frightened people don't move. Frightened people shut the
door and go back into that "jail of staleness". That's why I can't see one only
intellectual pattern in the Taleban system of thoughts, independently of their
involvement in the WTC events. Modern art? They destroy art. Technology? They
prohibit computers. Free love and beauty contests? We all know the situation of
women there.
In all this framework, where is the supposed defect of intellect? Pirsig simply
says that the defect of S/O science is that "it has no provision for morals".
But where it is written that it is impossible for intellect to have a provision
for morals? Putting S/O thinking at the top of the moral stair is indeed a
mistake. Denying any possibility for intellect to be able "to Dynamically
improve society" is IMHO a worst mistake. A terrific mistake.
Ciao
Marco
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