From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Oct 06 2002 - 18:26:16 BST
Sam asked:
Before I respond in detail to your post, I'd like to pose a question. Do you
believe that each side of the political debate, defined broadly as
progressive and conservative, can be held with integrity by people who are
both intellectually able and possessed of a fund of goodwill towards their
fellow human beings?
DMB:
I have to split my answer in two because intellectual ability and goodwill
are two entirely different things. If progressive and conservative
ideologies represent intellectual and social values respectively, then by
definition conservatives are, in some sense, intellectually disabled or
rather UNable. The question of goodwill is merely a matter of personality
traits and isn't related to the levels in this way. I think Pirsig
re-defines good and evil so they become something more like older goodness
vs. newer betterness. Its all good, its just that some things are better
than others. In this view evil consists in putting lower values above higher
values. The perpetrator of the evil doesn't see it as such and likely
believes in all sincerity that he is doing the right thing. Hitler thought
he was the saviour of the German people and plenty of Germans saw it that
way too. Slave owners quoted the Bible to justify themselves. To put it
simply, evil is being wrong, missing the point, missing the target, which is
the original meaning of the word "sin", a term borrowed from archers. I
don't mean to confuse nazis and slavers with today's conservatives, but the
idea is the same even in much milder cases. Sincerity and goodwill has
little to do with good, right or moral. Right or wrong, stupid or smart,
conservative or progressive, I have no good reason to doubt anyone's
sincerity of goodwill. Hope that answers your question.
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 - 10:37:54 GMT