To: Platt and Bard
From: Rog
> PLATT:
> I agree with John that Roger's summary is bland and necessarily so.
> Nothing but blandness ever comes out of committees, unless it's a
> camel. To believe we can come up with an extension of the MOQ by
> attempting to mediate all views is a Utopian dream based on the
> mistaken assumption that ten minds are better than one.
> ROG:
> But 10 minds can be better than one. That is why societies are so much
> more productive and creative than lone feral individuals. That is why we
> communicate in this forum.
PIRSIG:
"And beyond that is an even more compelling reason; societies and
thoughts and principles themselves are no more than sets of static
patterns. These patterns can't by themselves perceive or adjust to
Dynamic Quality. Only a living being can do that. The strongest moral
argument against capital punishment is that it weakens a society's
Dynamic capability-its capability for change and evolution."
ROG:
In other words, 10 living beings are not just better than one, they also are
better than 9.
PIRSIG:
"A tribe can change its values only person by person and someone
has to be first. Whoever is first obviously is going to be in conflict with
everybody else."
ROG:
So 10 potential firsts for an open and dynamic mind to benefit from. Those of
us trying to learn and grow can benefit immensely from other's values and by
actively allowing our values to interact and conflict. Capturizing and
summarizing our progress (or lack there of) along the way certainly can't
hurt.
PLATT:
My point being that it is an individual responding intuitively to DQ that
determines potentially useful higher patterns of quality rather than a
group. Thus, those who emphasized a personal PATH to address the
issue seemed to me more in line with the MOQ than solutions
involving some form of static intellectual criteria.
ROG:
Like the MOQ's static intellectual levels? We were trying to ADD to the 99%
of the static intellectual MOQ. Pirsig even requested that we do so. The
personal path angle was fleshed out sufficiently by Pirsig back in ZAMM, imo.
If the best this group can do is recommend we go sit under a banyan tree,
then we should unsubscribe today and start sitting. This personal path part
of the solution, though crucial, is inadequate. Embrace static intellectual
degeneracy!
PLATT:
Secondly, your emphasis on "harmony" reminded me of the following
from Chap. 24:
"What the Metaphysics of Quality indicates is that the twentieth-century
intellectual faith in man's basic goodness as spontaneous and natural
is disastrously naive. The ideal of a harmonious society in which
everyone without coercion cooperates happily with everyone else for
the mutual good of all is a devastating fiction."
It's that little word "coercion" that suggests that harmony across levels
is difficult to achieve without using some form of coercion to keep the
competing forces from overwheleming one another. The current "war
on terrorism" is perhaps a good example.
ROG:
Please allow me to clarify my view. I TOTALLY agree with this Pirsig
statement. The greater harmony achieved in society does indeed come from
coercion. The question we must ask is -- what type of individual behavior is
encouraged and what is discouraged via societies' various methods of
coercion? Pirsig's answer is that society should supress crime, racism,
activities harmful to family/community stability, torture, cannibalism, child
murder, etc etc. Note that these are all destructive patterns. He explains
that society doesn't put men in chains, it frees them from "the chains of
biological necessity." Social coercion is not a divisive force, it is a
freeing and harmonizing force between people. The war on terrorism is exactly
a social struggle to supress wanton destruction. A society with terrorism is
not harmonious or of high quality.
Your statement "to keep the competing forces from overwheleming one another,"
is half the battle, with the other half being to find ways to interact in a
mutually supportive way. The first suppresses destruction/exploitation, the
second enhances and creates quality (think of what a family can do that an
individual can't, or what a free trade organization can create that isolated,
protectionist countries can't.) You are also right that harmony is very
difficult to achieve. I will argue though that the evolution of the universe
can be viewed as the difficult and gradual evolution toward higher, more
moral forms of harmony. (with lots of missteps along the way)
Your feedback is appreciated. Am I making sense?
Rog
PS -- Bard, I appreciate your support and agree with most of what you wrote,
but your trust of "the natural goodness" of the human soul is 180 degrees
from Pirsig or from any scientific study on the brutality of primates and
man. Platt will undoubtedly give the quotes to show how contrary this view is
to Pirsig, but it isn't a minor misinterpretation, it is a DOOSY! (remember
the paragraph on pre-social cannibalism, torture and smashing baby heads?)
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