Mary, Jonathan, Roger, Fintan, Jay (Lakhani) and Squad.
MARY
was the first to respond to my old eugenics post and asked if not
finding a mate is a kind of breeding, and that the choise made on
grounds who is considered successful in the actual culture. Not to be
mean Mary, but you who spoke so vehemently about P. of LILA
"evaluating" Lila Blewitt from a bio/sexual pow, don't you sound like
the shrewd female discriminating on social/success criteria :-) ? Of
course it is breeding: the whole social arena is one big "eugenics"
activity. And Intellect hates it and tries to counter it, but
alas..we are not brains floating in a vat, or as you say ....in a
vacuum.
JONATHAN
I agree all the way down through your deliberations on eugenics, and I
wished that I had stopped at the "...eugenics as an idea should not be
contemplated". Not that the rest of the paragraph is wrong but a
little cryptic without qualifications...and who has the time to read
explanations at this twenty-letters-a-day pace? ;-)
After having concluded that social breeding has gone on in the form of
rank, caste, race you go on to say say that eugenics is not the result
of traditional society, but of the ivory tower!?. The first is
supposedly the Social Patterns of Value (from now on Q-Society) and
the second the Intellectual PoV (Q-Intellect)? Here our old
controversy over Q-Intellect emerges again, and I can only
repeat: Q-Society is all about bringing Q-Biology under control so
eugenics becomes a prime social value. And as Intellect is all about
bringing Q-Society under control eugenics (in the social form)
becomes an abominable thing.
Your "ivory tower", f.ex. - the Nazi ideologists preparing the
ground for the holocaust; THINKING out the idea that justified the
exterminations programs. However, that is not Q-Intellect at work,
but language (I avoid the term "thinking" because that automatically
puts you on the intellect track) in the service of Q-society.
ROGER
points out how killing of other males' offspring has been the common
trait among the mammals. Correct. As I say in my piece: "Q-Biology
(Life) is eugenics itself", and as the human being is biology too, it
was practised (greatly modified by Q-Society) up to Intellect's entry
as a moral in its own right.
However, Roger seems to have taken Jonathan's "ivory tower" bait,
admitting that Q- Intellect has made serious mistakes..
Again, Hitler and gang coming together THINKING out how to
exterminate unwanted people is not mental activity in the service of
Intellect. To kill is NOT an intellectual value!
Still, to call eugenics "same old shit" is correct Intellect but not
quite correct MOQ (I always come to the "beyond intellect" notion).
The values of the Q-hierarchy are good ....to the level it concerns,
it's what constitute them. If catastrophe were to strike and humanity
had to retreat to the social level, we would not stop THINKING, but
intellectual values would disappear and we would start to practice
eugenics - for example - like the Inuits of old who put their old and
infirm on ice floes to succumb. Except that it would not be
"eugenics" any longer, but good old tradition. The old people were
the first to accept their fate; it was the way it HAD to be.
The above only to demonstrate my point, let's hope everything goes
well and Intellect remains in power and that we may continue to call
it "old shit".
FINTAN
Lobotomy, ECT and drugs. Interesting, but hardly eugenics in
the social sense. Remember the part in LILA where P. says
that, like Biology, Intellect also has an "immune system"; namely
psychiatry whose job is to rectify the heretics wrong ideas? If one
person of the LS were to appreciate Pirsig's ideas on this topic, I
would bet on you. Not that I consider you "mad" - you are the sanest
around - but dynamic enough to see radical departure from SOM's
impossible "illness" model. So, I am very much looking forward to
opening a discussion on this most controversial topic ----some day.
Finally
JAY LAKHANI wrote:
> Your message about the 'quality' element in the universe is interesting. If
> you have done any research on what possible qualities constitue the universe
> I would like to hear of it.
> I have been working on this idea for sometime as well.
> I think that the idea of 'quantity' which we associate with measuring things
> and trying to work out 'how' things work out ignores the ideas that the
> first manner the universe unfolds is via 'qualities' (of the mind or of the
> universe - where does external stop and internal begin?). The present Chaos
> therory also by passes the idea of quantity. What do you all think?
Greetings Jay
Interesting observations. The quality element is what the
Metaphysics of Quality is all about, so I simply don't know where to
begin. Have you read Pirsig's LILA and/or the writings on the Forum
of the MOQ homepage? Also submit a little biography if you feel
for it.
Bodvar
homepage - http://www.moq.org
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