Dear MOQers:
What follows is a series of quotes. The two authors are speaking to the same
issues, but they disagree entirely on those issues. Maybe it would be best
to add nothing at all. Perhaps it would be best to just let Platt's views
stand in stark contrast to Pirsig's. But at the risk of insulting your
intelligence, dear readers, I feel compelled to point out some pretty
obvious things. For example, Pirsig compares socialism with capitalism and
sorts them out in terms of the levels of static patterns. That's clear
enough. But what Platt persists in misrepresenting is what Pirsig says about
the genuine nature of freedom and importance of DQ in this context. He
repeatedly insists that capitalism's inadvertant and uncomprehending brush
with DQ allows it to magically jump to the fourth level and trump it. He's
distorting the MOQ to support his ideology. I suspect that its not a matter
of reading comprehension skills so much as a psychological thing. You know,
its those mirrors. Anyway, here's a Pirsigism. It comes right after the
author compares negative freedom to the real thing, which is DQ.
Emphasis is Pirsig's...
"That's what neither the socialists NOR the capitalists ever got figured
out. From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism.
Its a higher form of evolution. It is an intellectually guided society, not
just a society that is guided by mindless traditions. That's what gives
socialism its drive." P220
Platt said...
It is clear in the MOQ that capitalism (free markets) and democratic
representative governments are better (higher quality) than
communism, socialism, Nazism and all forms of totalitarianism such
as found in Arab nations. Nothing in the MOQ claims capitalism and
democracy are perfect. But Pirsig makes clear they are superior
because they allow for (in fact, encourage) greater influence of
Dynamic Quality-the creative evolutionary force.
Pirsig...
Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over society,
were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the
social control of intellect. ... The gigantic power of socialism and
fascism, which have overwhelm this century, is explained by a conflict of
levels of evolution. P274
Platt asked Squonk...
Why do you think the MOQ would support socialism ruled by intellect?
Pirsig...
"The New Deal was many things, but at the center of it all was the belieg
that intellectual planning by the government was necessary for society to
regain its health. ...it was also a new deal the the intellectuals of
America." P274
Pirsig...
"It's not that Victorian social economic patterns are more moral than
socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite. They are LESS
moral as static patterns go." P221
Platt asked Squonk...
MOQ socialism? I find no such idea in Pirsig's books. Instead,
socialism is downgraded as being static. Also, SOM intellect can't
direct society. According to Pirsig, it has screwed everything up.
Pirsig...
«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».
Platt said to Horse...
My guess would be that the 60's were dynamically degenerate as
Pirsig said when describing the Hippies. Maybe in "unrestrained
capitalism" everyone has to work for a living.
Pirsig...
The Hippies have been interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the
period folling their departure as a 'return to values,' whatever that means.
The Metapshysics of Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie
revolution was the moral movement. The present period is the collapse of
values.
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