Hi Marco:
You wrote:
> Let me explain myself. Of course intellect builds rational maps of the
> lower levels, so I agree that rationality helps coping with
> nature/universe/static patterns... On the other hand, it seems to me that
> while rationality is of great help in controlling inorganic and biological
> patterns, it's not as well useful to use rationality to "triumph over
> society". This has always been my interpretation of Lila: an objective and
> rational anthropology is a disaster, as rationality can't grasp
> successfully the social realm, a.k.a. culture.
"Rationality" as you use the term above is based on SOM metaphysics.
Since it doesn't recognize values, it cannot lead society. However,
rationality based on MOQ, which does recognize the role of values in
leading society, is another story. That's the whole point of Chap. 22 and
24.
> But attention. This has been also, according to Pirsig, the defect this
> kind of intellectual patterns have been bearing.
Note your phrase, "this kind of intellectual patterns." You acknowledge
there is more than one kind of intellectual pattern. Exactly. What Pirsig
slams are SOM intellectual patterns. What's needed instead he says
are MOQ intellectual patterns, based on all together different premise--
the premise that Quality is the primary reality of the world.
>
> Science [...]
> has a defect in it. The defect is that subject-object science has no
> provisions for morals. [...] was this the intellectual pattern it was going
> to run society with?»
True. You can't run society with a rationality based on a valueless
metaphysics such as science offers the world.
> «A scientific, intellectual culture had become a culture of millions of
> isolated people living and dying in little cells of psychic solitary
> confinement, unable to talk to one another, really, and unable to judge one
> another because scientifically speaking it is impossible to do so»
>
> (from ch. 24)
Note Pirsig's qualifying phrase, "a scientific, intellectual culture . . ." His
thesis is that there is another "intellectual culture" possible, one based
on the MOQ where the first division is not subjects and objects, but
Dynamic and static quality. We're so used to living in the ocean of SOM
that, like a fish who doesn't know of the world above the surface, we
don't know that there's a whole world that includes and transcends
SOM called the MOQ.
> Scientific patterns are unable to lead society.
True.
> «Morals can't function normally because morals have been declared
> intellectually illegal by the subject-object metaphysics that dominates
> present social thought. These subject-object patterns were never designed
> for the job of governing society. They're not doing it. »
True
> Pirsig suggests the MOQ - "a larger intellectual structure" - as solution.
True. The MOQ is an intellectual, rational, reasonable, logical structure.
> «Phaedrus thought that a Metaphysics of Quality could be a replacement for
> the paralyzing intellectual system that is allowing all this destruction to
> go unchecked».
True.
> AND HERE IS THE CRUCIAL POINT.
>
> And Pirsig states also VERY CLEARLY:
>
> «In a subject-object understanding of the world these terms have no
> meaning. There is no such things as "human rights". [...] There are
> subjects and objects and nothing else. This soup of sentiments about
> logically nonexistent entities can be straightened out by the Metaphysics
> of Quality. It says that what is meant by "human rights" is usually the
> moral code of intellect-vs.-society, the moral right of intellect to be
> free of social control. Freedom of speech; freedom of assembly, of travel;
> trial by jury; habeas corpus; government by consent-these "human rights"
> are all intellect-vs.-society issues. According to the Metaphysics of
> Quality these "human rights" have not just a sentimental basis, but a
> rational, metaphysical basis».
True. In SOM there is NO intelligent, logical, rational basis of human
rights. Such rights are based on values, but SOM doesn't recognize
values. So human rights in the SOM world have to be based on
unspecified feelings, or, as Pirsig says, "a soup of sentiments."
> Platt asked what I'm meaning when I talk of Human Rights. You see, Platt,
> I'm just referring to that Pirsig's statement. Surely I'm not a rational
> intellectual of the 50's believing that human rights are subjective and
> therefore non-existing. Maybe you Platt, saying they are a "sentimental
> soup" are in the same group with those loser scientist intellectuals the
> MOQ claims are wrong. They believe that human rights are a sentimental
> soup. The MOQ says exactly the opposite.
No, they don't say human rights are a sentimental soup. Those 50's
and 60's intellectuals were all cheering for human rights, except they
never defined what those rights were in rational terms. They couldn't
because their rational terms, using SOM premises, said that rights
were subjective, i.e., based on feelings. You have to reread the
following 20 times:
"Phaedrus remembered parties in the fifties and sixties full of liberal
intellectuals like himself who actually admired the criminal types that
sometimes showed up. "Here we are," they seemed to believe, "drug
pushers, flower children, anarchists, civil rights workers, college
professors--we're all just comrades-in-arms against the cruel and
corrupt social system that is really the enemy of us all.
"No one liked cops at those parties. Anything that restricted the police
was good. Why? Well, because police are never intellectual about
anything. They're just stooges for the social system. They revere the
social system and hate intellectuals. It was a sort of caste thing. The
police were low-caste. Intellectuals were above all that crime-and-
violence sort of thing that the police were constantly engaged in. Police
were usually not very well educated either. The best thing you could do
was take away their guns. That way they'd be like the police In England,
where things were better. It was the police repression that created the
crime.
"What passed for morality within this crowd was a kind of vague,
amorphous soup of sentiments known as "human rights." You were
also supposed to be "reasonable." What these terms really meant was
never spelled out in any way that Phaedrus had ever heard. You were
just supposed to cheer for them."
Note: What "human rights" meant was never spelled out in any way."
Pirsig took it upon himself to spell out what human rights means, NOT
based on "sentiments" such as hatred of cops, but on the rational
structure of MOQ.
So my question to you was simply to spell out, like Pirsig did, what you
mean by "human rights." I take it your answer to be the same as
Pirsig's since you enumerated no other rights than Pirsig listed, namely
freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, of travel, trial by jury, habeas corpus,
government by consent. Further, you claim that your selection of human
rights is not based on "subjective" considerations, leaving me to
wonder exactly what your selection is based on since further on in your
post you object to the rational approach Pirsig takes. If your selection is
neither SOM rational, MOQ rational nor subjective, what basis is left?
Since this response is already too long, I will remark on the rest of your
post later.
Platt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:51 BST