From: sriram25@comcast.net
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 04:36:22 BST
Hello John,
You wrote:
> The MOQ does not offer much help here. Pirsig pursues his own demons, be
> they the issue of insanity or the death of his son Chris, through his
books,
> and all too often we sense that incorrigibility behind the 'rational'
> facade. (The diatribe against biological values at the end of Ch 24 of
Lila
> is an example of this.)
This is an example of an 'ad hominem' attack. It is against the man and not
the truth of what is being said by him. The fact that Pirsig was insane or
that his son was killed or even if he was a card-carrying Nazi has nothing
whatsoever to do with the truth or falsehood of his ideas. It is logically
irrelevent.
The logic texts generally just say that 'ad hominem' attacks are logically
irrelevent. However, the MOQ can go beyond this and make an original
contribution. It says that it is morally decadent. It is a social pattern
of value attempting to devour an intellectual pattern, and therefore
immoral. Pirsig's social status is being attacked by calling him insane and
chasing demons of his past, in order to deny the truth of the intellectual
ideas. It is a minor form of evil according to the MOQ.
Regards,
-- Sriram
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Beasley" <beasley@austarnet.com.au>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2002 9:28 AM
Subject: MD Re: Seeking quality
> Hi all,
>
> I rarely take part in the debates on current issues, for numerous reasons,
> but in today's batch of emails I received a petition, sent by a friend in
> England, asking me to sign up against any US led war on Iraq. In the same
> mail is Pantophobic's little piece contrasting the concern for victims of
> 9.11 with the vastly greater toll caused by the US in its many overt and
> covert wars of recent years, followed by Platt's outrage that the US
should
> be singled out for causing atrocities in the Twentieth Century.
>
> These posts disconcert and unsettle me. I did not sign the petition since
I
> am of the view that war, terrible though it is, is not necessarily the
worst
> thing that can happen, and that Saddham's pursuit of chemical and
biological
> weapons needs to be stopped, as should the US's pursuit of the same. (If
> 'New Scientist' is to be believed, the anthrax released in the US had been
> 'weaponised' in a US lab, in a program in contravention of international
> treaties that the US has signed.)
>
> While I agree that much of the material in Pantophobic's piece is correct,
> that most terrorist activity is initiated by states, and that the US has
> been just as ruthless as any other in this regard, I can't see the benefit
> of pushing biased and one-sided propaganda as a way of changing the world
> for the better. Most countries have been ruthless when it suited them.
>
> Meanwhile Platt's response seems on a level with the morality that
suggests
> that making the world safe for Americans is about the most noble thing
there
> is.
>
> So I ask, how does our understanding of the MOQ help? Does it throw any
> light on how such issues might be viewed? Let's try.
>
> It would suggest that while biological threats are indeed controlled by
> social forces, those social forces in turn need appropriate intellectual
> control. Saddham's threat is biological, social and intellectual. [Those
who
> see it as biological only can stop reading here. We cannot communicate,
and
> I am not interested in receiving your noxious responses.] Those who find
it
> hard to unravel the three levels - welcome. So do I. This is one weakness
of
> the MOQ, that we need to categorize complex actions and interactions in
> order to apply the moral hierarchy it supposedly incorporates. But the
> moment I characterize Saddhem as a 'germ', or some such, I have lost the
> plot.
>
> I have been struggling to remember the author of a book I read many years
> ago, titled 'Moral man and Immoral Society', (Niebuhr?) in which the
author
> argued that while it made sense to expect man to be moral, it made little
> sense to expect the same of nations. How much more difficult is it to make
> sense of a dictatorship, where the nation is substantially controlled by
one
> man. And how are we to make sense of Western democracies, supposedly ruled
> by their populace, yet generally managed by loose aggregations of business
> interests with close links to the military?
>
> So the MOQ seems to founder on the complexity of real life situations,
that
> are not so easily explained as biology dominating society, or some such.
>
> Then we have the issue of how to determine the facts in any situation. Not
> only which facts are true, but also which are pertinent. If we accept that
> Saddhem has biological weapons, are they really a threat to the US? If we
> accept that Saddhem controls large volumes of 'cheap to produce' oil, is
> this what really motivates US policy? We may live in an 'information age',
> but when it comes to the crunch our information is generally second or
third
> hand, and intensely manipulated by vested interests, politicians seeking
> re-election, and so on. Plus our own incorrigible final vocabularies have
> closed our minds in advance to information and ideas that offend our value
> systems.
>
> The MOQ does not offer much help here. Pirsig pursues his own demons, be
> they the issue of insanity or the death of his son Chris, through his
books,
> and all too often we sense that incorrigibility behind the 'rational'
> facade. (The diatribe against biological values at the end of Ch 24 of
Lila
> is an example of this.)
>
> One thing Pirsig does not doubt is that moral choices are to be made, and
> that they matter. Hence his leaving Benares Hindu University, and his
strong
> views on many issues that are elaborated in Lila and ZMM. But his chief
> opponents in formulating a MOQ, as he sees it, would be the mystics. And
> their view of morality, as I see it, differs radically from Pirsig's.
>
> On my reading, the mystic consensus would be that ultimately all is good.
> This includes torture (Rorty), the biological taking precedence over the
> social, or whatever. It is all part of the eternal lila, the play of
> creative realisation of being. The only moral good to the mystic is to be
> wholly open to what is in the moment, while 'evil' is to kill that
immediacy
> with judgments and projections based on the past. (I am not sure 'evil' is
> the appropriate word, but there is certainly a preference for immediacy.)
> This translates into a preference for dealing with 'what is' rather than
> with 'fantasy'.
>
> To the mystic all moral codes, including Pirsig's, are a kind of playing
at
> God, a presumption that we, as partial expressions of 'what is', are able
to
> judge the rest. And this relates to our egoic separation from the
totality.
> (Our sense of isolation and loneliness, which Pirsig identifies and seems
> unable to critique, stems from this same separation.) Wilber would have it
> that the mystic must return to the market place, and get involved in
> politics and social issues and so on, but this seems to be his view rather
> than reflecting the mystic tradition. Bodhisattva's return to the market
> place to help men find salvation, not run soup kitchens and organise
> political movements, though they are not actually precluded from such
> goings-on should they choose to become involved.
>
> To the mystic, then, moral action is action spontaneously arising from
> immediate experience. It is not calculated using the intellect, nor is it
> driven by social values or biological values. It is perhaps best expressed
> in the term "the wisdom of the organism", which operates as a whole.
Unlike
> Pirsig, who claims there is a hierarchy of values, which are quite
different
> from level to level, the mystic, while not denying that such values arise
as
> an outworking of lila, is content to let them be. They come and they go,
and
> influence us just as pleasure and pain influence us. The mistake we are
> prone to is believing that these values and their clash is somehow
> fundamental, important in itself.
>
> I find the mystic view foreign to my temperament, and almost alarming. It
> assumes that all our social constructs which are predicated on making the
> world a safer place for us all are fundamentally misguided. They are
> insidious as fantasies, and not particularly important or interesting as
> aspects of our existence. And they are based on fear.
>
> But the alternatives are equally grim. Resting my faith in a system, even
> one so enlightened as the MOQ, will not do. The other alternative seems to
> be to live in existential angst, making decisions despite never having the
> information to justify them, and living with the consequences in a world
> where "Hell is other people". All things considered I find the mystic path
> the most appealing.
>
> Thanks for your time,
>
> John B
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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