Roger,
Thanks for your welcome comments. I did not want an apology for your
'emotional outbursts'. They are understandable in the circumstances. While
the US has suffered this recent outrage, most Western democracies feel
threatened. There has been serious debate here over recent days as to
whether the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting planned for Brisbane in
a few weeks time should be deferred or cancelled. It was already expected to
attract anti globalisation protests, and the meeting of a significant number
of world leaders so soon after the New York strike could present an
opportunity to terrorists. Yet not to proceed with the meeting is sending a
signal that terror works. This is a global problem. It could indeed be my
sister next. (Or my nephew, who lives in Brisbane.)
What was evident to me watching the saturation CNN coverage on our TV
channels was the inability of those in authority in the US to even ask why
this had happened, let alone grasp that this could be analysed in other than
'good guys'/'bad guys' terms.
This got me to thinking in a couple of directions. I began to wonder what
Pirsig actually meant by morality. It's about telling right from wrong, good
from bad, isn't it? Well is it? I re-read Ch 22 of Lila, which has been much
quoted, and discovered the section I mentioned in my last post, relating to
the Indian values of kindness to children, and so on, and how these were not
suited to a complex technological society. I had read this before, of
course, but in the context of the current debate this sort of leapt out at
me. Platt accuses me of playing the man, but I was genuinely shocked by what
Pirsig was saying. I had always felt uncomfortable with his attitudes in
this area, but put it down to an understandable bitterness after the death
of Chris, his son.
Now I saw more clearly that Pirsig, in a guarded way, I admit, was asking us
to believe that it was the acceptance of these values, not the technological
society of the cities, that must change to improve the unexplainable low
quality of modern life, the secret loneliness and psychiatric isolation and
futility that had become a prison of the spirit in our modern world. He said
"Cities function on punctuality and attention to material detail. They
depend on the ability to subordinate to authority". In other words, to
maintain the Giant, we must give up the highest values of our recent past,
some of which are enshrined in the US Constitution, (or is it the Bill of
Rights?), and live lives of punctuality, subordination to authority (social
level authority, I note), and attention to detail. This shocked me. I call
it fascist. Hitler and Mussolini would have approved.
I have never seen this passage explored on this forum, and I wonder if
anyone can tell me if it has been seriously debated. One reason I had not
picked up on this before is the subtle way Pirsig argues this case. First
the Indian values are listed. Then the support for these in modern America
is noted, "a direction that it felt was right." The subtle use of 'felt' is
the first indicator of his course. Then he suggests that in looking to the
"common people" for a source of cultural values, these Indian values were
adopted unknowingly. And Pirsig agrees this worked well for a generation.
But in the second generation, he says, (implying from the sixties on),
"problems began to emerge". Then he points to how poorly Indians cope in
cities, and from that proposes the alternative values for technological city
life. He does not at any point clearly articulate what it means to give up
on those Indian values - rather suggests they have been tried and failed,
and we need to do better. It is all very subtle.
And wrong. Just plain wrong. When the American founding fathers sat down to
construct a model for bringing together a bunch of contrary states into an
new nation, they did so with a large contingent of Iroquois Indian leaders.
Indian values did not seep into popular culture via the movies and novels of
the 1930s, thence to influence the 'new intellectualism'. They were
deliberately chosen by the founding fathers who saw the remarkable success
of the Iroquois Confederacy at first hand, and chose to utilise it in their
model. Much of the success of the resultant democracy can be traced back to
this Indian input. And some of the most glaring weaknesses of the same model
can be seen to be derived from the deliberate changes made by an all male
group, which despite the pleas of some advanced women of the time was
determined to exercise its male 'prerogative', and did so, and in so doing
fatally amended key aspects of the successful Indian code. One consequence
is the ongoing environmental degradation of the United States, and indeed
the whole world, which provides it with raw materials.
If I am wrong about this I will accept correction, but please do me the
courtesy of doing your homework first.
The second direction my mind went in was to explore a little more fully the
meaning of 'fundamentalism', the word I feel comes closest to describing
the real enemy behind 'terrorism'. I noted that President Bush in his recent
address to congress, was happy to link terrorism to Nazism and other recent
nasties, but nobody seems too keen to talk about fundamentalism, probably
because too many potential votes could be lost.
I am still exploring this and feel less comfortable that fundamentalism is
the key issue, though I have trouble finding a better word. I am currently
re-reading parts of Erich Fromm's 1973 classic, 'The Anatomy of Human
Destructiveness', particularly the section on malignant aggression. I have
always admired Fromm, since I read his 'Escape from Freedom' many years ago,
and this re-reading only leaves me in awe of his intellect and grasp of the
big picture, with an immense wealth of detailed evidence to support his
theses. It is premature to try to integrate his insights into my thought
just yet, but this is where I feel the lure of quality just now.
The other area I feel needs exploration is linked to my comment above about
what Pirsig means by morality. I think it is high time we looked at
Kohlberg's stages of moral development, as amended by feminists if desired,
and made some effort to dig a bit deeper into quality and morality in the
light of this. I suspect Pirsig, and a good deal of the commentary on moral
issues in this forum, is mired in very low level of moral development, and
ignorant that it could be different. Enough challenges for one night.
John B
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