From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 00:18:28 BST
Sam and all:
Apologies for the length of this. I couldn't nix much without stepping on
Sam's toes.
Sam said:
Time to draw my specific questions to a close. I doubt it'll finish the
discussion, but given what you've been saying in related parts of the
thread, I'm not sure there's a lot that I'll want to add after this one.
DMB says:
OK. I'll let it go after this response, but I'd ask that you take a look at
my future posts in future threads.
Sam said:
So, to sum up your answer to my original question, your answer is 'No' -
because you do not believe that Conservative views can be held by the
"enlightened"; "I think liberal intellectuals can understand Conservatives
because you can't have any ideas without social values first. So liberal
intellectuals have what Conservatives have, but they also have something
more. They have something additional that Conservatives tend to mistrust."
Extrapolating from your answers, your view would seem to be that those of
Conservative bias hold their beliefs dogmatically and unreasonably, and the
Conservative viewpoint is the voice of the static social level, pitched
against the intellectual level, "that conservatism represents social values
in the conflict between levels" in your words. Moreover, "The difference
between levels is two different ways of thinking, not just different
thoughts. Its a different kind of consciousness, a different value system."
Hence - the Conservative is unenlightened.
DMB says:
Well, as I said, I GUESS you COULD say that conservatives are
"unenlightened". I only reluctantly accepted that term. Terms like stupid,
unevolved, underdeveloped, cognitively immature aren't much better and seem
much more insulting than is intended, but they all get at the idea. I think
in Pirsig's terms, we'd say conservatism is at a lower level and is
therefore less moral. From page 221 of Lila "It is not that Victorian social
ecomonic patterns are more moral than socialist intellectual economic
patterns. Quite the opposite. They are LESS moral as far as static patterns
go." (emphasis is Pirsig's)
Sam said:
Now I'll pause there and say that the rest of my post is devoted to arguing
that the attitude described in that last paragraph is - to put it
charitably - unsophisticated. If that summary is not a fair reflection of
your views, then I apologise.
DMB:
Naturally, I disagree. This conversation is all about understanding 20th
century political ideologies in philosophical and metaphysical terms. If
that's unsophisticated, I can't imagine what could be sophisticated enough
for you. I hope you're not resorting to mere insult.
Sam:
So, again to recap, you see Conservative v Progressive (liberal, whatever)
as synonymous with social v intellectual.
DMB:
Synonymous is too strong a word. Social and intellectual values are both
broader in scope than politics. But yes, I think Pirsig makes a good case
that those ideologies represent 3rd and 4th level values as they express
themselves in politics.
Sam said:
Now, the key part of my original post was: "The Conservative attitude does
not rule out the acceptance of new ideas per se, rather it suggests that new
ideas need to prove their worth before being accepted and widely
distributed. In MoQ terms you could say that a Conservative attitude places
a higher barrier to entry around the social level, and seeks to allow only
those intellectual level innovations that have demonstrated the ability to
static latch improvements in a way that preserves social value - including
the value of the ongoing society as presently constituted. As such,
Conservatism is itself an intellectual level ideology, and not necessarily
any more or less intelligent than the alternatives."
DMB says:
>From page 266. "..Victorian were the last people to believe that patterns
of intellect are subordinate to patterns of society. What held the Victorian
pattern together was a social code, not an intellectual one. They called it
morals, but really it was just a social code. ... The new culture that has
emerged is the first in history to believe that patterns of society must be
subordinate to patterns of intellect. The one dominating question of this
century has been, 'Are the social patterns of our world going to run our
intellectual life, or is our intellectual life going to run the social
patterns?'. And from the next page, "The test of anything in the Victorian
mind was, 'Does society approve?'. This description of the Victorian social
code matches your assertion pretty well. To assert that intellectual values
are acceptable only to the extent that they "preserve social value" and
"society as presently constituted" IS to assert social values over
intellectual values. This is why I prefer to call it anti-intellectual
rather than "less intelligent". And so to assert that this anti-intellectual
ideology is an intellecual level ideology is obviously not correct.
Sam:
In the light of our Socratic dialogue, I'd like to unpack that a little
more. I am arguing that Conservatism is something which operates at the
intellectual level - in other words, that it can be something held by an
'enlightened' person. I see a crucial aspect of operating at the
intellectual level to be a degree of detachment from the society which gives
birth to the intellectual perspective; to see that social environment, and
those social values, as something which is historically conditioned rather
than universal and absolutely normative; to be able to form judgements about
types of society and different types of social value; in short, to establish
whether this or that society has more Quality. I suspect you would disagree
with this understanding of the intellectual level.
DMB says:
That's not too bad. But its a long way from the assertion you made in the
preceeding paragraph. You've contradicted yourself. Further, Pirsig insists
that all intellecual patterns are culturally determined and emerge out of
the social level so "detachment" isn't the word I would have used here. As
Pirsig says on page 298, "The doctrine of scientific disconnction from
social morals goes all the way back to the ancient Greek belief that
thought is independent of society, that it stands alone, born without
parents. ... But what the larger intellectual structure of the MOQ makes
clear is that this political battle of science to free itself from
domination by social moral codes was in fact a MORAL battle." And on the
next page he says, "Once this political battle is resolved the MOQ can the
go back and re-ask the question, Just exactly HOW independent IS science, in
FACT, from society? The answer it gives is not at all." (emphasis is
Pirsig's)
Sam said:
However, I think we can agree that there is a clear sense in which
Conservatism is 'anti-modern' - and that was why I referred to Conservatism
as derived from Burke. From a Conservative point of view the Modern attitude
(post Enlightenment, exemplified in the ideals of the French Revolution) has
a defective understanding of human nature and therefore of society. Most
crucially, it depends upon an exaltation of reason and of bureaucratic
efficiency and control. This is where an understanding of ideology comes in,
for Conservatism (which is itself an ideology) considers the Enlightenment
ideologies (which have various different types between liberalism and
socialism and beyond) as wholly Modern, and thus defective. As Paco has
implied, a major difference between Conservative ideologies and others is
the different account of human nature, a different anthropology.
DMB says:
I've heard this kind of thing many times, but it has nothing to do with the
MOQ and only shows how poorly conservatives understand the ideals of the
Enlightenment. "The exaltation of bureaucratic efficiency and control", for
example, dates back to the Babylonians, at least. To cite this as a defect
of the Enlightenment is wrong by several thousand years. The kind of defect
that bothers Pirsig and other post-modern critics is Modernity's materialism
and its ignorance of non-rational modes of consciousness, such as the
mystical experience. But that's hardly the same as putting faith or religion
over reason and science, which is a solution that's far worse than the
problem it hopes to solve. The conservative account of human nature is all
tangled up in notions of original sin and other religious tenents, but
that's a really a topic unto itself.
Sam:
The key difference, it seems to me, is that you perceive all anti-Modern
perspectives to be aimed at regression (ie to abolish the intellectual
level).
DMB says:
No, the problem is with the domination of social values over intellectual
values, not the abolition of intellect. Big difference. And no, I perceive
this attempt to dominate as reactionary and immoral.
Sam quoted DMB:
In response to my distinction between fundamentalism and
conservative Catholicism you write: "Now there's a distinction without a
difference. When it comes to a discussion of social level values the
distance between Protesant fundamentalism and conservative Catholicism is a
fraction of an inch. Conservative Catholics ARE fundamentalist in their
thinking. Demoninational differences just don't matter. They're both
pre-modern and literalistic. Religion doesn't even matter. Islamic
fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism, whatever. In each case we're still
talking about a mythical worldview, a pre-modern, anti-intellectual
worldview. And in each case, this worldviews, when applied to politics,
result in anti-democratic, fascistic governments and the loss of rights,
especially for those who do not share the faith."
And then Sam said:
The fact that you are unable to see the difference between fundamentalism
and conservative catholicism, while consistent with your overall argument,
is at best ignorant, at worse wilfully obtuse. Fundamentalism insists on a
literal interpretation of the Bible, understood as the 'inerrant' word of
God. It is a wholly Modern phenomenon, derivative from particular strands of
Protestant thinking, which took its contemporary form from tracts published
in the early twentieth century in the US. It accepts the Modern conceit that
our views need a rationally acceptable foundation in order to be justified -
and it finds that foundation in (their interpretation of) Holy Scripture.
Catholicism is by any measure a more intellectually sophisticated attitude,
whose key difference from fundamentalism is a rejection of foundationalist
thinking, and which understands reason as inevitably corrupted by sin - and
therefore human reason on its own cannot get us anywhere, and hence, yes, it
is distinctly anti-Modern The fact that you see Fundamentalism (in all its
guises) as 'pre-modern, anti-intellectual' just demonstrates that you
haven't looked into the matter very deeply.
DMB:
Oh, lord. Yes, fundamentalism didn't exist until modern times. That's why we
call it reactionary. Its a REACTION to modernity. Duh! Conservative
Catholics may be better at constructing elaborate rationalizations for this
same rejection of Modernity, but I'd hardly call it sophisticated. The fact
is, we are presently witnessing the rise of fundamentalism all over the
world and its clear that the specific content the various flavors of
reaction makes little difference, to quote myself, "when it comes to a
discussion of social level values". The fact is, the world's great religions
are presently in reactionary mode. You know, because god is dead. Perhaps
you've heard?
Sam:
And you do mischaracterise Scalia's position. You say that he urges "U.S.
citizens to combat democracy in favor of divine authority" - which would
indeed be consistent with a fundamentalist approach. This is not what he
says. His words: "The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of
democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be
resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as
possible." This is not a call to combat democracy but a call to combat the
equation of government morality with individual morality.
DMB:
I don't see how you get from the quote to your conclusion, but that's ok. My
point is only that choosing to favor divine authority over democracy is
anti-democratic. This is extremely obvious, isn't it? How can anyone NOT be
disturbed by the fact that this notion is being expressed by a Supreme Court
Justice!?
And finally, Sam said:
As I see it, your understanding of Conservatism is itself a dogmatic
understanding. You see Conservatism as unenlightened, therefore it can
exhaustively be defined as the voice of the social level. Any attempt to
criticise the values of the Enlightenment (which you seem to take as
synonymous with the intellectual level) is immediately characterised as a
desire to take back those advances; it is therefore to be fought against
with all the energy that you display in your posts. Unfortunately, you are
simply repeating arguments that were already stale by the nineteenth
century, let alone the twenty-first. But of course, I could be wrong.
DMB says:
Now you're just ranting. There's not an idea here, only negative
characterizatons. And the only way I could be making 19th century arguments,
would be if Pirsig published his book in 1891, instead of 1991. Or perhaps
Mark Twain gave me and the book a ride back in a time machine? That's ok. It
was a long post in which you were defending your beliefs. That's bound to
make anyone a little crabby and irrational. I forgive you. :-)
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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