Platt and All MOQers:
I've been watching the "Dead Man" discussion with interest, but don't
really have much to add. I'll just say that the Quote is certainly a
reference to mysticism.
Instead of addressing that issue again, I'd like to say a few words
about hippies and what went wrong. Platt and others raised the issue in
their discussions of moral relativity, etc. It seems like the 60's are
still with us in so many ways. It seems like the culture war in America
has everything to do with it too. It seems like an important issue to
me. Hope this doesn't bore you.
Kids these days, with their music and their hair! What are they
thinking? We can still say it today. It could have been the complaint of
parents in the 1860's or the 1760's too. The ancient Greeks used to
complain about their young people in similar ways too. So forget about
the idea the the 1960's were unique in this respect. Sex, drugs and
Rock-n-Roll are the same as Wine, women and song.
The middle class in America just about doubled, going from one third to
two thirds of the population, between the end of WW2 and the end of the
sixties. That opened up the possibility of going to college for millions
of young people. Before the war, college was only for the elite. Almost
overnight, a whole new class of Americans was getting an education and
becoming more politically aware. Add the invention of the birth control
pill, the hydrogen bomb and a general disenchantment with the consumer
culture of American suburbia and you've got a recipe for some kind of
social movement. Some kind of response seems to have been inevitable.
And it wasn't just in the U.S, either. Young people all over the Western
world were responding in similar ways. Every major city from Prague to
San Fransisco was full of hippies in the late 60's. It was an
international youth culture movement.
Not only was it larger than most people imagine, the youth culture
movement was just the latest in a series of similar romantic movements
in history. One can trace these movements roughly by listing a few
names. The English poet William Blake (1757-1827) was the one who said,
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to
man as it truly is; infinite." Then Shoepenhauer, a transcendental
idealist, was the first Western philospher to incorporate Buddhism into
his views. He was a contemporary of the American Transcendentalists of
the 1840's; Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. These guys inspired Gandi and
MLK and helped to end slavery in the U.S. It was Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963) who wrote "The Doors of Perception", a description of his
experience with mind altering drugs. His title was a reference to
Blake's poetry and mysticism. And then there was the American poet, Jim
Morrison, who named his band for this same mystical notion, calling it
simply THE DOORS. This very sketchy, but hopefully you get the picture.
SIDE NOTE - Two movies that are very interesting in a MOQ sort of way:
"The Doors" starring Val Kilmer and a western called "Dead Man" starring
Johnny Depp. In the latter, the native Americans mistake Depp for
William Blake. Its cool! In both of the movies, native Americans are
dipicted as the sane people, the ones with dynamic quality on their
side. They both go so well with Pirsig's idea that the American Cowboy
actually embodies the value system of a plains warrior. You know, Butch
and Sundance in sepia tone.
Which is another thing to remember about the hippies; they wanted to be
indians more than anything else. Maybe they deserve credit for having
good instincts, even if their imitation tee pees and deerskin jackets
are laughable.
Pirsing says in LILA "The hippie revolution was a moral revolution
against society and intellectuality. ...in the 60's it was thought that
society and the intellect was the cause of man's unhappiness and
transcendence of both would cure it."
They weren't just rejecting The Victorian values of the 19th century,
they were rejecting the intellectual values of the 20th century too.
Pirsig also says "The pursuit of happiness seems to have become like the
pursuit of some scientifically created mechanical rabbit that moves
ahead at whatever speed it is pursued. If you ever did catch it for a
few moments, it had a peculiar synthetic technological taste that made
the whole pusuit seem senseless."
They knew that the 20th century's faith in material progress was no less
empty that the Victorian social order it sought to replace. All it had
given them was tacky little houses, the bomb, and an artless, soul-less
culture. Again, good instincts.
Pirsig again. "But the 60's revolution made a mistake. The hippie
rejection of social and intellectual patterns left only two directions
to go; toward biological quality and toward dynamic quality. The hippies
thought biological and dynamic quality were the same thing."
Their mistake was simply confusing two kinds of quality, an easy mistake
to make in a materialistic SOM culture. Take a hit of acid and
experience transcendence? You bet. Take a little estrogen pill and
become sexually liberated? Gimme some of that! Things like acid and the
pill tend to make the confusion even easier to make. It felt like
freedom, even if it was just henodism.
Still more Pirsig "By the end of the 60's the intellectualism of the
20's found itself in an impossible trap. If it continues to advocate
freedom from Victorian social restraint, it would get more hippies who
are carrying anti-Victorianism to an extreme. If, on the other hand, it
advocated constructive social conformity in opposition to the hippies,
it will get more Victorians in the form of the reactionary right."
In 1999 that quote seems like a cultural analysis of recent American
politics rather than a hypothetical warning. He wrote it years before
the rise of the militia and the Oaklahoma City bombing. A reactionary
right is exactly what we have, and lots of people are getting killed.
Given a choice between pot-smoking peace-nicks and the murderous thugs
of the right....there is no choice.
I think the hippies are too often used as scapegoats, not least of all
by the reactionary right. And it doesn't seem fair to put Pirsig into
the hippie bashing crowd. So much of it is just liberal bashing by
knee-jerk conservatives. Pirsig makes the case that the hippies were
half right. They were mistaken to think biological and dynamic quality
were the same, but they were right to believe that the answer could be
found in dynamic quality. Lie the roamntics before them, they sought to
cleanse the doors of perception and see the infinite.
One more Pirsig quote. "It is the intellectual pattern of amoral
objectivity which is to blame for the social deterioration of America.
Because it has undermined the static social values necessary to prevent
deterioration. In its condemnation of social repression as the enemy of
liberty, it has never come forth with a single moral principle that
distinguishes a Galileo fighting social repression from a common
criminal fighting social repression. It has as a result been the
champion of both. This is the root of the problem."
So don't blame the hippies. The real villian is amoral objectivity.
It's, like, a SOM problem, man. Be cool to the groovy cats, dig? Dr.
Strangelove is the monster, not Timothy Leary.
I double double dare you to try and answer the question Pirsig poses.
HOW DOES ONE DISTINGUISH BETWEEN GALILEO AND MANSON?
Thanks for your time.
David B.
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