Mlerner10, Bob. Scott, Bill, Platt and thank god for Glove and Rich:
I've been reading along with the government thread. Here's my two cents.
The difference between discovered and created laws echoes a distinction
made by my extremely religious college biology Professor. He gave a
lecture on the difference between revealed truth, meaning the bible, and
discovered truth, meaning modern science. He was about to begin teaching
the chapter on evolution and his intellectual and religious values were
in conflict. He sweated as he talked. I believe the MOQ maintains that
all laws are inventions. All laws are provisional, judged on a pragmatic
basis, until something better comes along.
Eistein's view of gravity is better as ideas go, but in the real world
of engineering and rocket science Newton's law still rules.
Rich and Glove are right to point out that the NAZIs were anything but
intellectual. One of the reasons that Fascism is so hard for people to
understand is that it is mostly irrational and emotionally charged.
Confusion about the nature of fascism is also due to the West's sympathy
for many of its elements. The similarities between far right Americans
and that of the NAZIs are too numerous to list. They are both rabidly
anti-intellectual, anti-communist, highly nationalistic and
militarisitc. You could say the same about Fascist Spain, Italy and
Germany. For reasons unknown to me, Fascist leaders are almost always
former communists or socialist before they turn against it. You could
say all these things about (spell?) Radavan Karadich and Slovodon
Meloshevic.
I think Pirsig mentions the Victorians, the Fascist and the Hippies for
a reason. They are each a part of the same story of the 20th century. He
uses these examples to show the relatively new battle between the social
and intellectual levels and to demonstrate the failure of the amoral
scientific world view. The victorians, he says, were the clinging to
power and their social level vaules even as the intellectual level was
struggling for supremacy. Queen Victoria died just about the time the
theory of relativity was formulated, cinema and automobiles were
invented and the last European Monarchy fell from power. This was the
sound of the arrival of the intellectual level of values in Western
civilization.
But the new ruler inherited a wrecked infrastructure, a global economic
depression, a flu epidemic and a horrified and decimated population.
Talk about a fixer-upper! Civilization was nearly ruined after WWI, when
the intellect finally came to dominate the culture and victorian values
subsided. Its easy to see WWII fascism as a reaction to the failures of
this new dominator. Hitler got revenge on that new order of things. He
tore it down in every way. In spite of the evil he commited, he was
quite the victorian. He was into clean living, family values,
patriotism, loved his dog and smiled at children. He was the ultimate
defender of German social values against the elite jewish communist
internationalists. America's militia members and Klu Klux Klaners hold
an ideology nearly identicle to Hilter's, but believe liberals are
fascists. Go figure.
The hippies also reacted against amoral scientific objectivity. As Rich
said, they were mostly hedonists, opting for biological values over both
social AND intellectual values. Turn on, tune in and drop out. They
mistook the biological for the essential and the mystical.
But Pirsig also rejects this same amoral scientific objectivity,
trashing subject/object metaphysics and insisting on Quality as the
primary reality. I think its safe to say that the main idea behind
Pirsig's work is to undo the view that there is an objective world
without values, to rescue morality from mere subjectivity and place it
back at the center of reality, where it belongs.
And Pirsig makes it very clear that it is moral for the intellectual
level to be in charge of things, so long as it doesn't undermine the
lower level values to the point of injury or destruction. Pirsig is
decidedly NOT anti-intellectual. He is a philosopher and a
metaphysician. I believe is also a mystic and neatly incorporates that
view into the MOQ.
I seriously doubt that Pirsig's MOQ supports the theories of economists
Hayek and von Mises. I happen to have graduated from Hillsdale College,
where they have the world's largest collection of works by and about
Ludwig von Mises. I'm no expert, but its safe to say that both economist
present theories that are essentailly founded on... you guess it,...
amoral scientific objectivity. It is an economic system that sees the
cost of labor as no different that the cost of electricity. They are
both just costs, which must be kept at a minimum. The existence of
poverty and vast inequality are simply accepted as objective facts.
War is good for the economy, but it kills lots of people and destroys
enormous wealth. Full employment is bad for the economy, it causes
inflation and outrageous labor costs, but its real good for people. Von
Mises and Hayeck and lots of other economist put economics before
people.
Part of the reason so many are so sick of Hollywood is tied up in this
same attitude. Like every other industry, their main reason for being is
to make money. Sex and violence have made Hollywood rich, but its not so
good for the culture. Intellectual movies out of tinsle town are few and
far between. Their game is Lethal Terminator and John Rambo Wayne. And
don't forget the video game and action figure spin off. Or are movies
now the spin off? Scary thing is, these same forces also control our
news media, which are mostly owned by arms makers. Pretty soon there'll
be just two companies in the world and everyone will work for one or the
other. The new world order is just more of the same amoral scientific
objectivity and we're likely to see the 20th century repeat itself in
the 21st, unless something changes.
David B.
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