First of all I love the way you post. It's like an NPR report on a Supreme
Court debate!
For all those reading, fair warning ahead of time: I just finished working
100.3 hours so
I'm primed to write!
----- Original Message -----
From: RISKYBIZ9@aol.com
To: Soj
From: Rog
ROG:
Just a point here. The social level is a level of quality that Pirsig
represents as a separate organism. Property rights confiscation is a very
low quality (ineffective) social pattern. It is not an example of WESTERN
cultural QUALITY, but of a FUNDAMENTAL cultural PROBLEM. Actually, it is a
problem that the West has been exemplary -- in comparison to other cultures
-- in solving.
I couldn't disagree more. You say "property rights confiscation" is
something
western culture has been exemplary in "solving". I think any culture which
came up
with the saying that the "chief is the poorest man in the tribe" shows you
there can
be completely different cultural viewpoints on "property rights". Obviously
the Manhattan
selling indians were laughing their ass off because they thought whitey was
buying
24 acres of clouds.
There have been thousands and thousands of cultures (which are now called
indigenous
cultures) which had what we would call today a belief that ALL property was
held in
common. It is only the Culture we are familiar with (call it east or west
it doesn't matter)
that says this acre is mine and this acre is not YOURS.
As for a societal pattern in itself, the belief in property as Property (can
be owned) is something
which societies FIGHT for. Hitler does not mince words in Mein Kampf when
he wrote that
the German people NEEDED the lands to the east for "breathing room". The
Germans did not
take over Europe in WWII because they were pissed off they took it because
they wanted all
that PROPERTY. I don't see how you can say property confiscation is of a
LOW quality for
societies!
ROG:
OK, I grant you that it is not a good precedent to allow modern governments
to sieze property. But the difference here is a matter of degree. And it
is
a huge magnitude of difference. But yes, I agree that it is a small step in
the wrong direction.
I personally believe it is a HUGE step in the wrong direction, which will be
elaborated
below.
ROG:
They are social patterns gone awry. The Inquisition was a social patterns
that had the effect of exploiting the many and of suppressing future social
quality. You aren't using the Spanish Inquisition as proof that Western
societies increase power by any means available -- and that this is in
contrast to other cultures are you?
The Spanish Inquisition got a lot of press so we know about it, but yes I am
most
definitely using it as "proof" that the Culture we live in most definitely
seeks
to increase power by any means available. You will not see one single
country
that is on the map today stop from gaining power by any means WHATSOEVER
available to it. Why? Ask the Ossetians, the Kurds, the Trans-Dniestrians,
the
Western Saharans, the Chechens or the Cherokee; they will tell you.
Otherwise you get wiped
off that very same map.
The Spanish Inquisition was one big game of "are you with us or against us"
or "are
you part of this society or not?". Any means necessary and any means
available.
ROG:
Again I agree. The best level of explaining and understanding societies is
not always at the individual level. Collective behavior patterns emerge.
You know what's funny? I was listening to one of my blood molecules talking
to
another a nerve cell and the blood molecule said "Collective behavior
patterns emerge".
Oh that's right, it's silly for molecules to be talking about us, to be
concerned with
US, whoever we are. And I will tell you that it's just as silly for you and
I to be
concerned with the societies of which we are a part. I know we have this
egotistical
human-centric view of ourselves as the mechanical carpenters who put
societies
together, as though blood molecules get together and make a man. Societies
are
created OF people not BY people.
Did you create speed limits on the highways? Did you VOTE for the
legalization of
speed limits? Did you put those signs up on the highway? Do you even think
it's
right for it to be 25mph in a road this freaking wide and spacious? Of
course not!
That's why the cop got you for speeding.
And my neighbor didn't do it and my brother didn't do it and nobody I know
or have
ever spoken to did it. Society did it and didn't ask for my vote and didn't
need it.
Nobody ever woke me up and said Soj how you feel about that 25mph on Hartley
Bridge Road and I said two thumbs up Jack!
Yeah, it's true patterns emerge. But societies have their own quality to
experience and
it isn't me and it isn't you at the tiller.
ROG:
The MOQ agrees that there is a missing component in the western paradigm --
they subtract value out of their Aristotelian/Cartesian worldview.
Supposedly
at least some other cultures don't miss this crucial ingredient -- though
they may miss myriads of other social values. Where I lose you though is
where you say "They are not built upon a "right or wrong" but upon a "can or
can't". Would you please both clarify and support this statement compared to
your indigenous 'exceptions'. (I certainly don't get it reading your next
paragraph -- but maybe I am just being dense)
The focus on what to do is based on what is meant by what to do to achieve
what.
The society we live in is based on what to do to persist. In the Darwinian
evolution
model we currently ascribe to, individuals adapt to survive long enough to
produce
heirs which survive long enough to produce heirs. The society we live in is
in the same
model, which is survive long enough to produce enough individuals to keep
the culture
alive to keep enough individuals surviving enough to keep the culture alive.
And hand
in hand with this is the survival method called "kill or be killed".
Americans on 911 were of course upset and saddened by our friends dying in a
horrible
way but the unity and OUTRAGE was because how dare you threaten the survival
of
our culture. Anything and everything we can do to insure that a similar
threat to the
survival of our culture will be done. 5,000 people die in car wrecks and we
don't go to
war against Chevrolet because car wrecks DO NOT threaten the survival of our
society.
Car wrecks are a PART of our Culture not its enemy.
It wasn't the lack of survival of 3,000 to 5,000 of our citizens which got
our Culture mad.
It was that another Culture threatened our Culture.
The opposite contrast is the Culture (unfortunately all now resigned to
"indigenous
culture" status now) that survives by diversity. That "the web of life" is
the diversity
which promotes life, including diversity of human life.
A forest if not "touched" by our culture is a vast complex interwoven web of
diversity,
what disney has a nice song about called "the circle of life" from the Lion
King. Yet our
society's behavior is one we instinctively know is "wrong" and includes
things like clearcutting
or hunting and exterminating every single wolf. These are permissable in
our Society but
would never ever exist in those indigenous cultures.
Is it because they are "noble savages"? No, I don't think there was
anything noble or savage
about indigenous cultures. To me they were evolutionary stable and
successful ways of living.
An IC (Indigenous Culture) man would blend into a forest and not destroy,
burn, chop it down
and poison it. An IC culture does not clearcut and poison because he is
"nice" or noble but because
all life is interconnected and IC human is NOT SUPERIOR to other forms of
life.
No IC Hopi ever suggested genocide against IC Navajo because the SQ latch
that "diversity means
life" was firm, including other forms of societal life. Sure IC Hopis
fought battles and killed and
did stupid shit all the time and cut down trees and did all sorts of normal
human things but ingrained
in IC Hopi was always that diversity = life. It's not hard to see WHY IC
Hopi had this in his mind,
because every other single form of life (virus to daisy to tiger included)
operates on the SAME exact
mode. Diversity is the DQ of this planet and variety is the spice of LIFE.
A wolf would never prowl
the boundaries of a forest killing every single snake it finds because
snakes eat some of the wolf's mice.
A wolf might kill one if it came across one but more than likely it would
just ignore it because it isn't
good to eat. There's no such thing as a genocidal wolf.
Contrast this with Culture we live in. Diversity is the enemy and must be
killed or else it will kill
us. Where did we get this idea? We got it because we are the foremost
practitioners of it. It may
seem like a long time ago and a far away place but real human beings were
tied to stakes and set
on fire in downtown Sevilla because they would not ADMIT to being enemies of
the Culture.
ROG:
I could offer that another explanation for no judicial branch is that this
is
a pattern which only develops in very complex, highly-advanced cultures that
have achieved large, specialized populations within a given area. Smaller
tribal units are usually run by a chieftan or "Big Man." As for no written
laws, may I suggest it is because they had no writing? This again is
something that cultures develop as they become larger and more complex.
I say "advanced" means advanced of one model of how to live. I say that
diversity
is the key to survival of ALL life forms and that it is not very good to be
advanced
if it means what we have today. Our laws are not special because they are
written,
they are special because they are full of shit. They change, they are
arbitrary, they
cover things which are not coverable. I sit in my chair every day and I see
people
come in every single day who break the laws and it's stupid and pointless to
ever
think it will ever stop. What we call "crime" is the result of this. We
write laws
and yet we know that a certain percentage of our population WILL ALWAYS
break
them! We say "this is wrong to do" and yet we know at the same time people
will
do it! It is so deeply buried in our minds that there's something wrong
with people
and that there's nothing to do that can stop it. What kind of world is that
to want
to live in???? Why would anyone want to?
Are IC cultures full of idiots and sluts and drunks and sluggards? Of
course. The difference
is that they do not rely on "conceived laws" to try and change people or
keep people from
being people. IC cultures are all constructed to take into consideration
that people are
going to do what people always do and that's why they don't need any law
books. IC
cultures have behaviors that are considered ok and others not considered ok
(and of course
different ones for different cultures) but the acceptable behaviors are
derived from what
WORKS for them not what is conceived or rationally deduced.
You are comparing a social phase of story-telling and ingrained mores to a
pattern of divided government and written rules (atop the underlying stories
and mores). To state that the first is superior is not valid. I will agree
that the above are high quality hunter/gatherer social values. But they are
not workable (they are by themselves of low value) as society gets bigger
and
more spread out etc, etc.
You are absolutely right. They are not workable as societies get biggers
and bigger
and spread out. But right now a society of six fucking billion people isn't
very damn
workable for the health of this planet.
SOJ:
The cultures we live in now are not in any way based on "self-evident", they
are based on an SOM analysis that is continually in flux and is usually
thought of as "superior" to those other cultures because the other cultures
use "superstition" and we use "rationality".
ROG:
What do you really mean by 'self evident?' I get the impression that you
mean static patterns that are drummed into people's heads until they are
unquestionable. If so, you may be right that modern cultures are more
versatile/dynamic (which can be messy, yet which the MOQ judges as GOOD
overall). And, according to the MOQ, intellectual values are more dynamic
than superstition, so yes, on this dimension, rationality would be superior
to superstition.
This seems to me to be a product of too much mandatory education. As though
the only way to learn things is to have SQ drummed into your head. When I
say
"self-evident" I use that term the way RMP did when describing Quality. You
can't
say what it is but you can sense it and (as in the case of the essays) you
can come
to group conclusions about which essay is "self-evidently" the better one.
Our society presupposes that the RATIONALIZED course is "self-evidently" the
best one. It's a great tool to use but the problem is we sicken ourselves
by dependance
on it. You can eat a Snickers for a snack but if you eat nothing but
Snickers for a week
you are going to be feeling mighty poorly indeed.
SOJ:
And yet at the same time I've
seen on this list (as well as a lot of other places too) how we, this
culture which is now 99% of the human race, is a "cancer" or a "virus" on
the planet.
ROG:
Here is where I lose you altogether. Why is Western culture a cancer or
virus on the planet? Western culture has produced a better health, a higher
standard of living, longer life, better education, more freedoms, etc and
has
done so in a fairly sustainable way with the environment (in general
pollution and environmental protection have improved dramatically as western
countries gain in social quality.) Yes, we have permitted ourselves to
thrive, and the environment has had to adjust to us and vice versa. And
yes,
the progression has been far from perfect (every solution leads to new
problems) and we still need to solve the ozone problem/global warming etc.
(Or do you think the Hopi's will solve it? And no, not experiencing a
higher
level problem is not the same as solving it!)
I am not saying western culture (or actually I just say Culture since it
isn't any
damn different in China) is a virus or a cancer. I am saying I have heard a
lot of
people say it. And I think it's no different than John and his motorcycle
he didn't
want to fix or worry about. It FEELS like a virus. It feels dirty. It
makes you cringe
to think someone in our society just bought a "virgin forest" because you
know when
our society is done with it, it will not be "virgin" anymore. It will be
violated!
I think the vast majority of human beings on this planet feel that they got
caughtup
somewhere along the way in a society worldview that they don't particularly
like all
that much, but it was either convert or be killed. Convert or else be a
homeless dirty
bum panhandling on the streets. (In our good buddies house of Mecca they
will of
course tell you convert or else be whipped, hand chopped off or even hung if
you
don't convert). A lot of people do feel they are now part of something that
is poisoning
destroying and ruining the very planet itself.
I do not think we have "progressed" I think we have been caught up in
something that
has gotten out of control and the more we try to control it the less in
control we get.
SOJ:
It doesn't receive much argument to say the world's population
of human beings is growing at an enormous rate that is consuming every
resource on the planet to sustain.
ROG:
Agreed -- problem. But, lets analyze the nature of this problem. The cause
is quite simple -- higher quality medical care, standards of living and
nutrition and ensuing reduction in death rates. Birth rates haven't gone
up.
It is death rates that have gone down. So, your problem is pure biological
quality! (which is the initial purpose of society, and thus a measure of
where social quality is REALLY to be found)
I will give you the famous Quinn answer to that. Take any living creature
on
earth and it will grow in population to match its food supply. The
population on
this planet grows because every year we convert more of the earth's biomass
into
people. The amount of food consumed by human beings increases every year
because
the amount of human beings increases and the increase in the amount of food
consumed by human beings means a decrease in the rest of the biomass on the
planet.
It is a closed system. Hamburgers do not parachute in from space. They
come from
cows which increase in number every year by converting more grass into meat
that
goes into making more people.
Once we state this, the question is what needs to be done to solve the
emergent problem created by the underlying solution. The answer -- of
course
-- is lowering birth rates. Now, this is exactly what your evil western
cultures have done. They are no longer growing appreciably. The problem is
with all the other cultures that have gotten the benefits of Western Science
without making the underlying adjustments to their reproductive tendencies.
If your problem is overpopulation, then the answer is fewer children.
Right?
No. Children are not made out of fairy dust. They are made out of food.
Less
food means less people.
ROG:
You are presenting the "noble savage" argument. You find quaint, rustic
virtues in a primitive culture studied from afar and dismiss all the
problems. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure there are wonderful things we can
and should learn from the Hopis. However, if you want to hold their culture
up as higher quality, you need to eliminate your technologies, your
education, your standard of living, your modern medical care, your rlue of
law, your ability to communicate across the globe, your science, etc. More
importantly, you need to point out which 95% of the human race needs to be
exterminated (perhaps we could ask for volunteers), because Hopi culture
can't sustain anywhere near the world's current population. Or is this what
you WANT?
And, btw, maybe the Hopi's are the exception, but l Hunter/gatherer
societies
are often quite warlike. Most American Indians certainly were. Murder rates
are as high or higher in most hunter/gatherer societies than in anywhere but
disfunctional modern inner city areas too. Murder is the most common cause
of
death in many primitive cultures.
Extremely warlike! And yet not one was genocidal. Interesting! Not one
ever
hunted a competing predator animal to death either. Not one ever
exterminated
other forms of plant life that competed with the plant food it liked to eat.
Now
why is that? Is it because they were noble philosophers? I rather think it
was because
diversity is an evolutionary strategy which has been very "successful" in
the sense
that diversity in life keeps more life alive.
The only problem is that all pro-diversity life forms can be exterminated by
just
one anti-diversity life form. Of course once all diversity in life is
finally exterminated
we will out what the old indian meant when he said "once all the trees are
cut down
and all the rivers are poisoned then you will find out you can't eat money".
Anti-diversity life forms are like a nuclear war. You will die shortly
afterwards but you
will die with a smile on your face because you wiped out the other guy
first. Great!
ROG:
My summaried response:
There is indeed a missing in Western Culture that Pirsig fills. No society,
to my knowledge, has yet been predicated upon MOQ morality. However,
western society is relatively moral as evaluated by the MOQ -- it is large,
it is powerful, self-sustaining, it allows people to thrive biologically, it
has created the intellectual level, it is dynamic, it is versatile, it
creates more freedom, etc.. You never gave any clear arguments on your maxim
or of justifying after the fact. And what in the heck is your last point
about WWII?
Sorry if I am coming across so contradictory, but I would like to establish
an environment where we can both question our assumptions and grow. I will
say that your arguments smell suspiciously of that post-modern,
self-loathing, anti-rationality, anti-westernism thing that has infiltrated
the SOM halls of "higher" learning: All cultures are hunky-dory except
western culture, which is corrupt. Please don't fall for it.
Post modernism and cultural relativism and their misguided world-views are
an
outgrowth of extreme SOM absurdity, and should never be confused with the
MOQ.
Rog
Whew too tired to say anything about this one other than thanks for writing
and
investing your time in me :)
--Soj
(last post for the night I promise to those who just got like 6 in a row
from me, sorry
about hogging the soapbox folks!)
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