Platt
About this quote...
> "The idea that biological crimes can be ended by intellect alone, that
> you can talk crime to death, doesn't work. Intellectual patterns cannot
> directly control biological patterns. Only social patterns can control
> biological patterns, and the instrument of conversation between society
> and biology is not words. The instrument of conversation between
> society and biology has always been a policeman or a soldier and his
> gun."
>
.
.... an observation.
Pirsig says elsewhere that the laws, or morals, of the biological level
are "the laws of the jungle". The one that immediately comes to mind in
this context is "kill or be killed" but this is an over-simplification.
At the biological level the cycle of life and death are inescapable
everything must "kill" and "eat", in their broadest senses, to survive.
The inverse of this is the self defense law, that if you try to "kill"
and "eat" me I am justified in killing you to stop that from happening.
And these at the biological level are perfect moral ,necessary, and good
laws. "Find it / Fuck it" or the drive to reproduce is another of the
most basic "jungle" laws. On occasion in the course of this pursuit
"kill it" also rears it head but this is not a general or overriding
pattern in nature. When you say...
> Those who kill or threaten to kill are acting at the biological level and
> must be treated as such. I hope you aren't joining some who excuse the
> attack on American as somehow justified.
I think you have properly interpreted Pirsig's quote. But I wonder if
this is not another case of Pirsig stretching a relationship beyond its
useful limits. I think we would all agree that "kill it" (limited to
"eating" and cases of protecting reproduction and offsprings) is a
fundamental and basic law of biology. I think we would all also agree
that "kill it" outside of these very limited and strict biological
limits is a perversion, is what forever societies have called a "crime."
Now the problem I see with this is that this perversion is a social one,
not a biological one. In other words we do not see "kill it" for other
than limited biological means appear until the social level emerges and
begins to dominate the lower levels. So IMHO the "policeman or a soldier
and his gun" are social patterns of value which are trying to control a
SOCIAL PATTERN OF VALUES, A SOCIAL PERVERSION of a moral, necessary, and
good biological pattern. But this perversion is not at the biological
level at all, but is purely a conflict of values at the social
level.That societies have found and continue to find it useful to solve
social problems by killing the biology does not make it necessarily the
best, most moral, way to solve them. In fact to continue to think of A
SOCIAL PROBLEM as a BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM is completely misguided and may
well contribute to, rather than help solve the problem.
but that just my opinion
3WD
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