From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Tue Oct 08 2002 - 12:37:48 BST
Hi David,
I'll hope you'll forgive my continuing impersonation of Socrates, in asking
you more and more questions, in order to draw out your perspective. I think
Socratic dialogue can be effective if it is done honestly (of course) but
more importantly if it is also accompanied by a desire to set out each
participant's actual position (in other words, if it is not done
sophistically, in the way criticised by Pirsig at the end of ZMM). I do have
a specific end in mind, and (perhaps naively) I think that we can come to
some measure of agreement about how we can describe political discourse in
the light of the MoQ. But that is about three or four iterations of the
argument away from here.
To my question: Is it your view that those who are Conservative
(politicians/ voters/ sympathisers) are unenlightened? Your answer is
(broadly) yes - "Do the unenlightened hold conservative views?... Yea, I
guess you could say that." [NB you reverse the order, but I don't think
that's significant at the moment - I asked whether Conservatives were
unenlightened, and you answered that the unenlightened are conservatives.
Your answer leaves open the possibility that you can be Conservative and
enlightened, but I'm assuming that wasn't a deliberate "loophole" on your
part.]
However, you embed your answer in a discourse about ideology: "There is a
strong correlation between ideology and intelligence/education... more than
anything else I think its a matter of overall
psychological development... Contrary to conventional wisdom, we don't
choose our ideologies off the shelf like so much breakfast cereal, rather
one's worldview is directly related to one's level of development."
Please would you say (in general terms) what you consider an 'ideology' to
be, and say whether you think a) ideologies are good or bad things *as
such*, b) whether it is possible to operate at the intellectual level
without an ideology, and c) how to determine which ideologies have more
Quality. I realise that's a big question, and the answers might overlap, but
I'm not after big answers - broad brush strokes will do!
PS what you quote about Scalia was pretty scary.
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
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