From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Thu Oct 10 2002 - 23:38:40 BST
Paco:
Just a few examples of why I get frustrated talking to you...
> DMB:
> This doesn't add up.
> And it contradicts so much of what Pirsig says. Rigel.
> Think of Rigel. He's
> a classic American Conservative. He's not some gun-nut
> neo-nazi militia guy.
> He's just a Republican. What's so hard to get about
> Rigel?
>
> PACO:
> Since when have Manhattan divorce lawyers been classic
> conservatives? This is as silly as saying that Jamie
> the pimp is your classic liberal.
>
New DMB: From page 162 of Lila "Rigel was just pushing a narrow
tradition-bound socio-biological code of morals which it was certain he did
not understand." And from page 162, "Like the stuff Rigel was throwing at
him this morning, the old victorian morality." There are lots of clues
throughout the book, but this should be more than enough to make you see
that Rigel is a Conservative and is dominated by social level values. If
not, you are truely hopeless. Perhaps Pirsig created him as a Divorce
attorney precisely because it reflects his concerns with marriage, which is
a social level converntion. The fact that he helps people dissolve marriages
and had an affair with Lila, while he also condemns Lila's destructive
behavior only shows the inconsistent and hypocritical nature of social level
views.
Paco said:
> You have this odd, extremist view of all-that-
> is-liberal is intellectual and good and all-that-is-
> conservative is backward and stupid and power-focused
> and evil. The truth is that either version, if taken
> to an extreme is of very low quality. It is the
> interplay of the two that creates quality.
>
[David Buchanan]
On page 274 Pirsig says, "Communism and socialism, programs for the
intellectual control over society, were confronted by the reactionary forces
of fascism, a program for the social control of intellect." The extremes
involved in thiis confrontation makes the conflict between social and
intellectual values very easy to see. The conflict between conservatism and
liberalism is a little more subtle, but not so much that you should fail to
see that the same conflict is at work there too. This was the point of
providing examples of the assertion of social values over intellectual
values in contemporary Conservatism. And yes, Pirsig repeatedly shows the
stupidity and lethality of the social level, of the Giant, who "doesn't mind
losing a few bodies." Or how about that Victorian sentiment? "The only good
Indian is a dead Indian." Again, there are plenty of examples in Lila, but
this should be enough to make you see that one of the most objectionable
features of the social level is its' tendency to war and genocide and one of
main benifits of intellectual control is to reduce this exploitation cruelty
and death. It is no accident that the vestiges of Wilsonian internationalism
prohibit colonialism, genocide, war crimes and even wars of aggression. And
these intellectual level international laws are, for the most part, opposed
by Convervatives like Bush.
By the way, your examples of the evils of liberalism were absurd.
Liberals support North Vietnam, anti-feminist, homophobic totalitarian
regimes, nationalizing vast sections of the economy? What color is the sky
in your world? Preposterous!
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