Hi Jonathan, Horse, Bo and LS:
Now that cooler heads have prevailed permit me to call upon a post
submitted by Bodvar Skutvik to the LS on January 19 of this year
because it beautifully demonstrates how to use the MoQ to rationally
consider ethical questions without resorting to unrestrained
emotionalism and name calling.
Bo wrote:
"....your question: "Is eugenics moral" requires a little preparation.
I don’t know how familiar you are with the Metaphysics of Quality
(MOQ), but from your well-written essay it sounded good enough. As you
will know: according to the MOQ everything is moral or value, but all
phenomena do not belong to the same static value level. This is the
reason so many issues take on a confusing taint when addressed from
the Subject/Object point of view. Yes, it is the source of all good
versus bad struggles of this world.
"Well, then where in the MOQ hierarchy does eugenics belong? At first
glance the obvious place would be the interface between the Inorganic
(matter) and the Biological (life). Only the organisms able to adapt
to changes in environment survive, but this is hardly eugenics in your
book, only when the Social level comes into play does it take on the
ominous quality we usually connect it with.
"Society" in the MOQ sense is a very wide term. It can defined as
"the whole at the cost of the part" and in that capacity groups have
always put pressure upon its members to adapt to the group's interest,
f.ex. an insect colony's highly specialized individuals, and flock
animals' total devotion to the common cause (such things are called
"instincts", in SOM). This is the extreme, but even human societies
"breed" individuals that can best fill the society's needs. However,
this comes naturally so to say; Eugenics as an idea (political
program) is a relative modem phenomenon.
"According to Pirsig (Chapter 23 in LILA) the time from the turn of
the century and up to the second WW was the last throe of the Social
level's dominance of Western culture, and the war itself the final
shootout between the rising Intellectual level and the declining
Social one. Fascism and Nazism were social value presented as
political programs: the individual was to sacrifice itself for the
common cause (Das Vaterland, the race etc.), and the unwanted were to
be removed (holocaust).
"The MOQ postulates this law: the value of a lower level is low value
to the one above. Naturally, for the rising Intellect, social value is
invariably bad, and the Western culture which is now dominated by
Intellect look upon every social effort to control the individuals as
an infringement upon it's chief value, freedom. Death penalty isn't
eugenics, but another social value abhorred by Intellect.
"Conclusion: To the Inorganic level eugenics isn't "known". To the
Biological level it is amoral - neutral - life is eugenics itself. To
the Social level it is moral, and to Intellect it is immoral. As
Intellect is the highest value level, eugenics as an IDEA should not
be contemplated; no programs should be worked out to refine the human
stock by killing "unwanted" individuals. And yet, it cannot be
eradicated and is still practiced under new names: pre-natal tests,
abortion, gene manipulation, the Genome project, etc.
"If you still insist: "Yes, but is eugenics REALLY good or bad?" there
is no such (objective) reality in the Quality universe, there is only
this hierarchy of morals. Nothing can be dismissed as REALLY evil
without ending up with paradoxes and/or with an incomplete world."
Isn’t that terrific? I think so. The issue is not whether Bo or Pirsig
is right. The issue is whether such problems can be discussed calmly
and reasonably among people of goodwill. IMHO, the MoQ is a huge step
forward towards Quality in that regard, and Bo shows why.
In response to Jonathan's plea to trust human instincts in matters
moral, here's what Pirsig had to say:
"What the Metaphysics of Quality indicates is that the twentieth
century intellectual faith in man's basic goodness as spontaneous and
natural is disastrously naive. The ideal of a harmonious society in
which everyone cooperates happily with everyone else for the mutual
good of all is a devastating fiction. It isn't consistent with
scientific fact." LILA, Chap.24.
I must disagree with Bo and Donny to the extent that they leave the
impression that Pirsig doesn't tackle contemporary social ethical
issues in LILA. He applies the MoQ to many of them, from war to
capital punishment to racism. His MoQ assessments of the failures of
communism and socialism are especially penetrating. He doesn't give us
a manual, that's true. But he does gives us a rational scaffolding on
which to ponder the issues from a new perspective—a perspective I
submit that is different from any heretofore offered in human history,
i.e. revolutionary.
Unlike Jonathan I don't KNOW that I'm right. The only thing I know is
that I could be wrong. Where Jonathan and I definitely agree is that
ZAMM and LILA are "thought provoking" novels. I hope we can continue
to keep the emphasis on "thought."
Platt
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