Platt and squad
Platt Holden wrote:
> Also from Diana:
> >Yup, sad isn't it. What we have is a load of rigid and static social >patterns of EGO and NARCISSISM trying to devour the intellects that >want to break free.
>
> Now there's a clear answer if I ever saw one. You've used the MoQ to
> analyze what's been going on in the Squad lately and used it to render
> a moral judgment.
Yes I did, didn't I. Well, maybe it does work. I think I said I wasn't
sure about it before. In any case I'm having trouble making up my mind.
Fintan appears to have responded to my criticisms with a lot of capital
letters and references to fecal matter. I don't think I'm being too vain
if I point out that I'm a little bit better at dialectics than he is. Of
course that doesn't mean that I'm wrong, but just because you can
construct a good intellectual argument it doesn't necessarily mean that
you're right.
One reason I quit economic and political journalism was because the
publisher I worked for insisted that we always came to the same
conclusion - namely that the free market solves everything. We were
expected to select "facts" and write them up in such a way that they
supported that view. But it struck me that you could just as easily
write the same story in a way that it supported other views, so what was
true?
Another problem is that we haven't really tested the morality of the MoQ
properly. The discussions that we've had so far seem to have involved
either a. situations that most people don't have much information about
(so how can they analyse it?) b. reversions to previously held opinions
without any attempt to analyse the situation in terms of the Metaphysics
of Quality. I suggest in future we stick to topics that everybody knows
a lot about and that are not too emotive, that way, if the MoQ doesn't
work we can't blame it on something else.
> I think it's sensational that you attribute egocentrism and narcissism
> to the social level, an insight that baffled me for a moment. But of
> course. How can you be an egotist unless you compare yourself to
> others in society?
Pirsig says that celebrity is the dynamic force of the social level and
I think ego, in its colloquial sense, is the desire to be a celebrity.
Even in our little mailing list there are those whose desire to be a
celebrity here, is greater than their desire to increase the
intellectual understanding of LILA.
> P.S. Many thanks for your chapter by chapter synopsis of Lila.
I have still to edit it, afterwards I'll probably put it in the forum.
Diana
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