Dear Jason and others,
To me you sound like a Zuņi priest (nothing wrong with that as they have
their static role), as you seem to know exactly what would be good and what
would be wrong for society and what are the good guys and the bad guys.
Pirsig states (p. 256): It seems as though a society that is intolerant of
all forms of degeneracy shuts off its own Dynamic growth and becomes static.
But a society that tolerates all forms of degeneracy degenerates.
In The Netherlands a risk of the last type is not imminent. But most of the
politicians in The Netherlands did become a type of technical administrators
that spoke a peculiar type of governmental Dutch, arranging their affairs
with as litlle interference of the people as possible. Most of the
politicians did not take Pim Fortuyn seriously and tried to marginalise him,
as you do, by comparing him with Hitler. They were flabbergasted when he got
the support of a growing part of the population. Some of the politicians now
admitted that they missed the boat, and even admitted that his role was
useful (even if you did not agree with all of his ideas) in waking them up
and getting them emotional involved. Some of the media confessed that they
were "against" him and did not give him a fair treatment.
Pirsig (p. 185): It's the " bad" guys, who only look nice a hundred years
later, that are the real Dynamic force in social evolution. That was the
moral lesson of the brujo in Zuņi. If those priests had killed him they
would have done great harm to their society's ability to grow and change.
Again, I would be careful with "eleminating degenerates" (as you write) to
quickly.
My comment on the (static) majority that tried to prevent Fortuyn peacefully
to become a majority was from p. 255:
Phaedrus was suprised by the conciseness of a commentary on Robert's Rules
of Order that seemed to capture the whole thing in two sentences:
No minority has a right to block a majority from conducting the legal
business of the organization. No majority has a right to prevent a minority
from peacefully attempting to become a majority. The power of those two
sentences is that they create a stable static situation where Dynamic
Quality can flourish.
Pim Fortuyn was a democrat. I do not share all of his ideas. But it was
unjust that his opponents tried to marginalise him in order prevent that he
and his followers peacefully could become a majority.
Willem
----- Original Message -----
From: jason bastin <jwbastin@yahoo.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 8:29 PM
Subject: Re: MD Pim Fortuyn
> Willem & all,
>
> --- "W. Beekhuizen" <willem.md@wxs.nl> wrote:
>
> > Pirsig tells us in LILA (p. 255 Bantam dec 92):
> > It seems as though any static mechanism that is
> > open to Dynamic Quality
> > must also be open to degeneracy - to falling back to
> > lower forms of quality.
>
> I agree. My argument is that Fortuyn's probable
> election to office (before he was assasinated) would
> have been a degeneracy. He gained popularity by
> playing on people's prejudices and irrational fears
> (the immigrants are taking all the jobs, and their
> crazy beliefs are going to destroy our way of life).
> Yes, the social welfare system would have probably
> benefitted from Fortuyn's conservative economic
> reforms, but that is no reason to degrade intellectual
> values.
>
>
> > In my eyes Pim Fortuyn had a lot of Dynamic Quality.
> > More and more people in
> > The Netherlands did see him as a savior. Especially
> > since the political
> > (static) majority tried to prevent him peacefully to
> > become a majority.
>
> What do you mean by, "Fortuyn had a lot of Dynamic
> Quality"? Are you talking about the fact that he
> wanted to make economic reforms to help the economy,
> or the fact that he blamed immigrants for economic and
> social disharmony, and thusly wanted to close the
> borders? I'll admit that his economic reforms could be
> seen as Dynamic, but I don't think he was really
> playing with any new ideas. However, his ideas about
> immigrants, Muslims in particular, are definitely not
> new or original or revolutionary, and only lead to
> degeneracy.
>
> I'm an American, let's use the good ole U.S. of A. as
> an example. You could track the political manueverings
> of the Bush administration (conservative) from day
> one, and you would find a pattern of intellectual
> values being opposed and beaten by social values. I've
> seen it every day since Bush was selected President by
> our Supreme Court. Planned parenthood funding cut,
> life-saving research opposed by "Judeo-Christian
> ethic" made illegal, no attempt to stop Israeli abuse
> of Palestinian's until too late, and the stripping of
> rights from all those of ethnic groups that might
> support "terror" (which basically means immigrants,
> they must consider McVeigh an American anomoly).
>
> Also, I would arque that just because a segment of
> Dutch society viewed him as a saviour doesn't mean he
> is one, or that he had dynamic ideas. Nearly every
> western country has a segment of people that views
> Hitler as a saviour.
>
> I'm not really sure what you mean by, "the political
> (static) majority tried to prevent him peacefully to
> become a majority." If you are reffering to his
> assassination, he was killed by an individual not a
> political majority. However, if you are reffering to
> his demonization by media and those in power, I don't
> see how it's any different than the way he demonized
> immigrants and Muslims. Tasting your own medicine is
> sometimes a bitter experience.
>
> > But (p.256),
> > How do you tell the saviors from the
> > degenerates?
> > .The problem is that you can't really say
> > whether a specific change is
> > evolutionary at the time it occurs.
>
>
> Yes, how do we tell the saviours from the degenerates?
> If the answer does lie in being able to judge whether
> a specific change is evolutionary, then we can
> immediately place Fortuyn in the degenerate pile. His
> ideas on immigration, as a source of social woe, are
> irrational and if enstated would lead to social values
> triumphing over intellectual values. Must we repeat
> mistakes from the past before we can say, "Oh yes, he
> was definitely a degenerate and not a saviour". Should
> we allow another Hitler (I'm just using him as an
> example, and not equating Fortuyn to Hitler) to
> cleanse a few hundred million people before we judge
> him or her a degenerate? We might not be able to
> identify saviours at first glance, but we can
> definitely use the MOQ to eliminate a few degenerates.
> I'm all for heresy, but I don't need the degeneracy.
>
> -Jason
>
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