From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Oct 05 2002 - 20:36:06 BST
Howdy Moqers:
Welcome back John Beasley.
John said:
Two recent interchanges in this forum seemed to me to reinforce his
argument. David's 29th Sept posting (on Moral Clarity) argued that
conservatism is dominated by social values, and the response from Roger was
predictable (denial, avoidance, outrage, followed by a smoochin 'We really
don't disagree that much'). I wouldn't blame David for not coming back.
DMB says:
Thanks. That's pretty much how I saw it too. Sad and frustrating. Sam's
response was more clam and reasonable, but it only amounted to a
re-definition of Conservatism as a bunch of cautious intellectuals and, like
Roger's post, had almost nothing to do with the MOQ or Pirsig's descriptions
of social level political movements. Nearly as sad and frustrating. This
forum could venture into the practical affairs in today's world, into
current events and issues. Pirsig's idea of levels in conflict could go
along way toward exploring what is going on in the world. It could, but the
responses consistently miss the point, deny the Pirsigisms, avoid the issues
and otherwise trash the conversation. Sad. And frustrating.
John said:
Steve asked does Pirsig's "MOQ actually clear up moral issues such as
capital punishment, human cloning, abortion, etc, or is it more of a lens
through which to view such issues that offers a perspective of biological,
social, and intellectual interplay?" I think the answer is obvious. The
problem is that each player seems to have already made a number of key
assumptions into a form of dogma, that no amount of argument can touch. This
is what I understand to be the incorrigibility of their final vocabularies.
DMB says:
Right. What you bring to the MOQ makes all the difference. One can have a
perfect understanding of the MOQ, but if one wants to make an ethical
judgement about cloning one better know something about cloning too. Etc.
Dogmatism and incorrigibility are more like personality traits that can
appear just about anywhere, at any level. I think using the MOQ as a moral
compass can certainly be hindered by any kind of narrow-mindedness, but the
key is the bring tons of actual facts and knowledge to it. A compass works
much better in combination with with a good map.
John said:
Some supporters of the intellect may be annoyed to see their position lumped
in with fundamentalism, but the more I reflect on this the more I am
convinced that the difference is not so great. Both believe that there is a
best answer, the one is 'revealed', the other 'discovered'. This whole
outlook is fundamentally challenged by the postmodern understandings that
have come to dominate modern thought in an obsessive way.
DMB says:
Lumping the two together ignores too many important distinctions, especially
when it comes to reading the MOQ and today's headlines. People who like
final answers can be attracted to either religion or science, but that fact
doesn't erase the distinctions between theology and physics. And how do the
"postmodern understandings" escape the intellectual designation? We've all
heard about how shrill and dogmatic pomos can be, no?
John said:
The postmodern attempt to view everything through the lens of language is
not all bad. It has forced us to think more carefully about the role of
language in our understanding, and points to a creative role in shaping the
world we inhabit through the language we adopt.
DMB says:
Pirsig recognizes this too. You know,... Descrates thinks only because
French culture exists, therefore he is. All intellectual patterns are
culturally determined. The MOQ saves this from Nihilism, which John rightly
pointed out is the danger of this linguistic turn, by insisting that this
cultural and linquistic context is not arbitrary, but is an highly evolved
level of reality, the social level.
John said:
The mystic assertions of a reality prior to language are surely correct if
we look at human infancy. The question is whether the mystic solution is a
regressive or progressive one. ................ Intellectual knowledge is
therefore a barrier to knowingness, since it tends towards closure, while
inquiry is open.
DMB says:
The problem is with the regressive brand of mysticism. Once I asked the
author of the Guidebook to Zen and the Art about this issue, about the
relationship between intellect and mysticism. He put it simply, "Well, yes.
You have to have a mind before you can transcend it.". The way he said it
indicted that he thought this was pretty obvious. And again, some
intellectuals mind be hard headed, but that's not a good reason to
characterize intellectual knowledge itself as such. Afterall, science and
scholarship are driven by curiosity, exploration and inquiry. The scientific
method is designed to be open ended. Hopefully, one can develop to a point
that the intellectual quest is no longer adequate, but it is supposed to be
included even after it has been transcended. As you can see, I'm suspicious
of anti-intellectual attitudes even from mystics.
Alan Watts makes an interesting case that the desire for transcendence from
the illusory world was really all about transcending NOT the intellect,
which didn't exist for much of the history of mysticism, but conventional
society. The ascetic tradition was basically about dropping out of the
culture to discipline the mind.
I think there's some truth to this idea.
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 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 10:37:53 GMT