Hi Platt and all MOQers:
I'd like to express my disagreement with your comments about the WTC
memorial. It seems to me that you're distorting the MOQ to accomodate your
political views. Please bear with me. I'm a little rusty. Squeeeek.
Platt wrote...
Yes, and the message it ought to carry as I interpret the MOQ (and in
the context of the debate about the particular memorial proposed) is
that an intellectual pattern of empirical truth is superior to a social
pattern of political correctness.
Sure, some folks in the PC crowd can be awfully shrill, but that's true of
every cause. In fact, the anti-PC crowd can be every bit as shrill. But
that's just politics, not metaphysics. And I agree that intellectual
patterns are superior to social patterns, but I think you've incorrectly
characterized the two sides in this memorial debate. So-called political
correctness has become a catch-phrase and a term of derision, but the
original idea behind it is to assert intellectual principles like equal
rights, equal protection and other solidly American values. The push for
diversity is only about inclusion. If a principle is applied only sometimes
then its not really a principle. History clearly shows that certain kinds of
people have been excluded form the ideals of liberal Democracy. Its nothing
less than an effort to make America live up to her own ideals, and to fight
the long-standing social conventions and attitudes that contradict those
ideals. Its no accident that this so-called movement comes out of the
universities. And besides that, the easily observable fact that New York
city's rescue workers are black, brown, and female, as well as white and
male, is no less empirical than any photograph.
Platt also wrote...
But the truth of the three white fireman raising the flag is a
BETTER truth than a diversity-imposed, politically correct version of the
truth. That's what I understand the MOQ to say. Don't you?
Nope. The firemen raising the flag is a huge lie, not a "BETTER truth", but
its a distortion that has very little to do with the color of their skin,
which would probably be dipicted bronze or something anyway. People like the
image because it looks so much like the raising of the flag over Iwo Jima.
That WW2 image is rightly seen as a dipiction of a hard-won victory, but the
NYC firemen are raising the flag over a pile of rubble that included
thousands of shattered bodies. Let's not pretend that its an image of
victory. Such a pretense only denies the horror, grief and sadness. That
denial might make us all feel better and the desire to avert the eyes is
understandable, but it distorts the truth. In that sense, its a lie. Add all
that to the patriotic appeal of the flag and I think its clear that such a
memorial should be classifed as a social level truth and not as an
intellectual truth. In fact, I'm not sure any statue could rightly be called
an intellectual artifact.
On a related topic, Platt wrote...
Engineering belongs mostly in the inorganic level with some spill over
to the biological with genetic bioengineering. Then there are the social
engineers, but their legitimacy is highly questionable. Medicine is
mostly biological level with some spill over to the social level with
psychiatry, another questionable pursuit.
Here you've confused the sciences with the things they study. Engineers
certainly use organic and inorganic materials and often for social purposes,
but Engineering itself is essentially an applied science and as such it is
at the intellectual level. The same holds true for the social and medical
sciences.
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