Rick, all
Yes Rick,
that inscription, that few centuries later Socrates borrowed as one of his
mots, is one of the points I've always assumed to support my vision of
intellect. Socrates has been a great individual, and his whole work has
been to evoke the inner individuality of his compatriots. His teachings can
be maybe summarized with a simple sentence "cultivate and use your own
brain". Indeed, his times were the times of individuality (think of the
Sophists), and the prelude to one of the greatest ages of intellectual
growth in the history of humankind. Sadly, in few decades the Giant took
back the control... and we have to wait the Renaissance for another leap.
So, why do I drop individuality? I've realized I don't want to fall into the
same mistake others are IMO falling into: considering that the whole
intellect is exhausted with the kind of intellect they do prefer. The mot
bears two concepts: "know" and "thyself" (I love this Olde English...).
Indeed, I have to admit that the only possible link with the convinced
supporters of Intellect as thought, truth, objectivity, reason.... is just
the term " know". We all want to know,and fear ignorance.
Then, as I've said, I think the MOQ, with Socrates and with the Sophists,
recognizes the centrality of the individual in the intellectual level.
"Know
thyself" is a very old idea, and is very akin to the oldest idea Pirsig
talks about: arête. Here is the best defense of individuality as the
OPPOSITE of isolation:
«A person who knows how to fix motorcycles...with Quality...is less likely
to run short of friends than one who doesn't. [...] My personal feeling is
that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by
individuals making Quality decisions and that's all»
(ZAMM, Chapter 29)
Read it with MOQish eyes: Here we have entered the intellectual age. The
best thing you can do is cultivating your self and make arête decisions.
The excerpt is so relevant I want to report it entirely as an afterword.
I read it as the decisive KO uppercut to those believing the MOQ is about
realizing a new "quality" level beyond reason. Objectivity has separated
Reason (thought, SO Logic, Scientism...) and Quality (art, excellence,
individuality....). The MOQ unifies them. And, please, don't tell this is
ZAMM. There is not a single sentence in Lila rejecting this point.
Ciao,
Marco
«Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is
certainly associated with the newer technological devices...TV, jets,
freeways and so on...but I hope it's been made plain that the real evil
isn't the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate
people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It's the objectivity, the
dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the
evil. That's why I went to so much trouble to show how technology could be
used to destroy the evil. A person who knows how to fix motorcycles...with
Quality...is less likely to run short of friends than one who doesn't. And
they aren't going to see him as some kind of object either. Quality destroys
objectivity every time.
Or if he takes whatever dull job he's stuck with...and they are all, sooner
or later, dull...and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for
options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own
sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he's likely to discover
that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to
the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not
only the job and him, but others too because the Quality tends to fan out
like waves. The Quality job he didn't think anyone was going to see is seen,
and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is
likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends
to keep on going.
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world
will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all. God, I
don't want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social
planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These
can be left alone for a while. There's a place for them but they've got to
be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We've
had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource
without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted. Everyone's just about
out of gumption. And I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of
this American resource...individual worth. There are political reactionaries
who've been saying something close to this for years. I'm not one of them,
but to the extent they're talking about real individual worth and not just
an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they're right. We do need a
return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We
really do. I hope that in this Chautauqua some directions have been pointed
to.
Phædrus went a different path from the idea of individual, personal Quality
decisions. I think it was a wrong one, but perhaps if I were in his
circumstances I would go his way too. He felt that the solution started with
a new philosophy, or he saw it as even broader than that...a new spiritual
rationality...in which the ugliness and the loneliness and the spiritual
blankness of dualistic technological reason would become illogical. Reason
was no longer to be ``value free.'' Reason was to be subordinate, logically,
to Quality, and he was sure he would find the cause of its not being so back
among the ancient Greeks, whose mythos had endowed our culture with the
tendency underlying all the evil of our technology, the tendency to do what
is ``reasonable'' even when it isn't any good. That was the root of the
whole thing. Right there. I said a long time ago that he was in pursuit of
the ghost of reason. This is what I meant. Reason and Quality had become
separated and in conflict with each other and Quality had been forced under
and reason made supreme somewhere back then. »
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