Hi Platt
On 10 Oct 2001 at 12:42, Platt Holden wrote:
> Horse, rather than attempt to rebut each of your arguments (for there is
> no persuading one who has his mind made up), I will contest just one
> passage in your recent post because it specifically involves an
> interpretation of the MOQ in which you deny the biological level of crime.
So let me get this straight then. You haven't made up your mind and you're still
flexible about how the MoQ illuminates recent events? But because I don't agree
with your (incorrect) interpretation then I'm the one who is stubborn. Is that about
right?
Platt, what your argument boils down to is this:
Crime is biological value.
Terrorism is a crime.
Terrorists are criminals.
Terrorists are germs
Criminals are germs.
Germs must be destroyed.
Ergo Criminals must be destroyed.
Having looked all through the quotes that you have picked from Lila I fail to see
anything that says it's OK to bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age. The bombs
and missiles currently raining down on innocent Afghani's is not justified by
anything in Lila. Most of those being killed are starving people who have already
been damaged more than any American ever has. This is not a war but a
slaughter of innocent civilians.
Let me pick up on the quotes you use and your comments:
> Now let's look at the evidence that supports my contention that,
> according to the MOQ, criminal behavior stems from the biological level
> and is morally on a par with the behavior of animals, bugs and germs.
Does this include white collar crime? Fraud is a crime I believe and
embezzlement. Perjury is another crime. Are these and a whole stack of other
crimes 'Biological'. People who commit these crimes are criminals and according
to your reasoning should be mercilessly oblterated.
> PIRSIG:
> "The idea that biological crimes can be ended by intellect alone, that
> you can talk crime to death, doesn't work. Intellectual patterns cannot
> directly control biological patterns. Only social patterns can control
> biological patterns, and the instrument of conversation between society
> and biology is not words. The instrument of conversation between
> society and biology has always been a policeman or a soldier and his
> gun." (24)
>
> Under the SOM intellectual pattern, Pirsig's statement is ridiculous.
> There is no such thing as "biological crime." There is only social crime
> caused inevitably by some form of social injustice--child neglect, lack
> of opportunity, racism, sexism--you name it, SOM always finds an
> excuse (as in the case of excusing terrorism because of Western
> arrogance, neglect, bombing--whatever). But under the MOQ
> intellectual pattern, we get a whole new view (a new set of spectacles)
> of the nature of crime. Again and again Pirsig says crime is a conflict
> between biological and social levels.
Or Social and Intellectual levels as well. Do you accept the idea of International
Law? The Geneva convention is as much Intellectual patterns of Value as it is
Social patterns of Value and exists to control behaviour that stems from biological
patterns of value amongst other things. You have made far too simplistic a case
out of what Pirsig says Platt and in so doing lost the point of it..
> PIRSIG:
> "What's coming out of the urban slums . . . (is) a reversion to rule by
> terror, violence and gang death--the old biological might-makes-right
> morality of prehistoric brigandage that primitive societies were set up
> to overcome." (24)
>
> Note the emphasis again on "biological" and "rule by terror," as if Pirsig
> had the likes of Bin Laden and his merry men in mind when he wrote
> those words.
Or the CIA for that matter when they trained and funded the Mujahadein/Taliban!
There's a great quote in Lila that you failed to show Platt:
"Biological quality is necessary to the survival of life. But when it
threatens to dominate and destroy society, biological quality
becomes evil itself, the "Great Satan" of twentieth century
Western culture. One reason why fundamentalist Moslem cultures
have become so fanatic in their hatred of the West is that it has
released the biological forces of evil that Islam has fought for
centuries to control."
Chapter 24 - Lila
So why aren't you right behind the Taliban Platt? They are doing exactly what you
say they should be doing. Ruthlessly destroying those that show any tendency
toward biological value. In fact if you want to take it to a logical conclusion they
were acting extremely morally in supporting Bin Laden and the attack on the
WTC. After all it is the west that has caused the emergence of the values the
Taliban abhor and suppress.
Your reasoning would appear to be:
Islam has spent centuries controlling Biological forces of evil
The West unleashes these biological forces evil
Islam recognises this
We kill them
Hmm! Civilised behaviour???
> PIRSIG:
> "Thus, throughout this century we have seen over and over again that
> intellectuals weren't blaming crime on man’s biological nature, but on
> the social patterns that had repressed this biological nature. At every
> opportunity, it seems, they derided, denounced, weakened and
> undercut these Victorian social patterns of repression in the believe
> that this would be the cure of man's criminal tendencies." (22)
>
> The MOQ clearly blames crime on man's "biological nature." That the
> terrorists used a social value (religious belief) to overcome biological
> nature (suicide) makes their crimes doubly horrendous.
The MoQ says that biological patterns of Value give rise to many crimes that are
biological in nature - rape, murder, torture etc. Those crimes that involve money
are not identical as money is to a great extent social value. Insider dealing is a
crime and involves stocks and shares - more social value with a smattering of
inlellect. You could say that much of it is driven by greed - biological value.
Complexity builds and it fails to be as simplistic as you wish it to be. Crime and
criminal behaviour is not entirely Biological.
> PIRSIG:
> "In the battle of society against biology, the new twentieth-century
> intellectuals have take biology's side. Society can handle biology alone
> by means of prisons and guns and police and the military. But when
> the intellectuals in control of society take biology's side against society,
> then society is caught in the cross fire from which it has no protection."
> (24)
>
> An SOM pattern would never consider that soldiers fighting humans
> are fighting biological forces. Note that the MOQ, however, puts human
> aggressors in the same biological category as deadly germs--both
> being assaults on social values and both bent on killing.
Oops I must've missed that one. What you refer to above is biological value but
you are are reasoning poorly. Because a germ is biological value and intellectuals
have taken biologys side regarding human behaviour, this does not equate
humans to germs. If this was the case we would have to incarcerate germs for
criminal behaviour. As far as I'm aware the police and army don't often get called
in to treat a cold or a dose of the clap! Their purpose is to restrain the behaviours
in HUMANS caused by harmful and/or destructive biological patterns of value.
They are not treating germs or germ behaviours. Once again, people are not
germs and no matter how many times you repeat this mantra and interpret Pirsig
incorrectly IT DOES NOT MAKE IT SO.
> PIRSIG:
> "There had always been a battle here between intense legions of the
> most Dynamic and most moral on one side, confronting the most
> biological and least moral at the other; between A-class people and F-
> class people." (24)
>
> The notion of F-class "biological" people is anathema to SOM types
> who, having no way to distinguish between good and bad (morals are
> subjective), say that human behavior is be judged on the basis of a
> cultural context. Pirsig, by contrast, says if your behave like an animal
> by initiating physical force on others, you should be judged as such
> regardless of context. What do we do with dangerous animals? We kill
> them or confine them.
Becasue it is IMPOSSIBLE to reason with them becasue they do not possess the
faculties required. It may be extremely difficult to reason with some humans
(George Bush JR. and Osama Bin Laden to name but 2) but it is not impossible.
It may also come as a surprise to you that the notion of Good and Bad exist
outside of the MoQ and not always as 'just what you like' but often as moral
absolutes - which is why we have laws aginst murder, rape etc. But the MoQ
gives an infinitely better means of explaining Good and Bad.
>
> PIRSIG:
> "From the hotel window, looking out across the park, it seemed as if
> you could see from the north, from the ghetto areas there, a dreadful
> night, and eclipse of social patterns by invading unchecked biological
> patterns, closing in and gradually putting New York into a sleep from
> which it might never recover. It isn't a war of races or of cultures. It's a
> war of society against patterns of reason and patterns of biology that
> have been set loose by the mistakes of this century." (24)
>
> If Pirsig had seen the planes hit the Trade Center towers from his hotel
> window, he might have described what occurred using the same
> language--patterns of biology at war with society. (Note it isn't a war of
> cultures as some suggest.) Luckily, America has representatives in
> power who have not succumbed to SOM's moral impotence and are
> still capable of identifying unmitigated evil when they see it, i.e., when
> (in Pirsig’s phrase) "biological quality becomes evil itself."
Didn't you say somewhere that we should stick to what Pirsig DOES say rather
than what we would like him to say:
On 11 Oct 2001 at 13:32, Platt Holden wrote:
> Hi Wim Nusselder:
<SNIP>
> But if we are looking for what Pirsig says about the
> levels, then it seems to me we are limited pretty much to what he says,
> not what we would like him to say.
And now you do that very thing.
> PIRSIG:
> "Intellectuals must find biological behavior, no matter what its ethnic
> connection, and limit or destroy destructive biological patterns with
> complete moral ruthlessness, the way a doctor destroys germs, before
> those biological patterns destroy civilization itself." (24)
>
> If this doesn't reduce human beings who commit crimes (terrorists) to
> the level of germs, then you and I differ in understanding what words
> mean. Far from negating the entire concept of the MOQ as you claim, it
> is an essential feature of the MOQ structure to place terrorists at the
> biological level.
We obviously do then because no matter how hard I stare at the words or twist
their meaning (Pirsig saying what we want him to say) I cannot see Pirsig telling
me that humans are germs.
What he does say - and I agree with him 100% - is that __destructive__
BIOLOGICAL PATTERNS OF VALUE (in other words those values that cause
destructive types of behaviour) must be limited or destroyed. There is no mention
at all or whatsoever of Pirsig telling me to kill another human being. You are
inventing meaning to suit your own purposes by deliberately twisting what Pirsig
says. It's there, you've quoted it:
"... limit or destroy destructive biological patterns with complete moral
ruthlessness, the way a doctor destroys germs..."
read it over and over again. Destroy the patterns of value ***** NOT ***** the
humans in which those patterns reside. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
THEY ARE NOT SYNONYMOUS.
THEY ARE NOT EQUIVALENT.
>
> I agree with the moral values expressed in the MOQ and believe we
> have a moral obligation to go after the terrorists with "complete moral
> ruthlessness" and squash them and their supporters like bugs before
> their "biological savagery" destroys civilization.
The MoQ and Pirsig say that we must limit or destroy the PATTERNS OF VALUE
that cause those behaviours. Not the terrorists, not their mothers or their wives or
their children or other innocent civilians in an insane lust for revenge. This is what
Pirsig says and what he means - you have completely misinterpreted what he
says. If you can show me a passage in Lila where Pirsig advocates the killing of
innocent civilians in order to destroy the destructive patterns in others I would like
to see it. Not your interpretation but an actual passage or quote.
Horse
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