Hello everyone
Bill Justin writes;
>Hello,
>
>Some comments on some comments:
>
>Platt writes about Pirsig's observation that twentieth-century
>intellectual faith in man's basic goodness as spontaneous and natural is
>disastrously naïve. He says, "Thus, to rely on people's 'sense of
fairness' to promote individual
>freedom while maintaining social order appears to me to be Utopian. What do
you think? Do you a believe in the perfectibility of mankind?"
>
>My experience is that when I rely on other people's sense of fairness, I
get burned. But I rely on my own. I think mankind will slowly get close to
perfection.
Glove:
When I was a child, I would watch my father performing different tasks
around the house and I firmly believed I was witnessing perfection itself in
his attention to detail and his precise actions. Later I came to realize
that my father was just a man like any other man and had his imperfections
too. Still later, I realized that I too was just like my father, imperfect
and fallible... and much later still, I came to see that what I witnessed
thru my child eyes was indeed perfection, and that everyone contains that
perfection, or rather, the perfection contains us all?
No, mankind will never be perfect, or even approach perfection, for
perfection is in the individual and not to be found in society... man and
woman may approach perfection in spirit and in action... indeed even become
perfection in spirit and action... but that perfection is something Dynamic
and unseen. There will always be war and poverty, crime and hate, just as
there will always be sharing and prosperity, Good deeds and love.
To me, Pirsig's Jamie represents the archetypal Shadow, and Jung said the
brighter the ideal, the baser the Shadow. Nazi Germany strived towards
social perfection, and either wittingly or unwittingly released the Shadow,
which exists in seeming contradiction to that perfection, but in fact is its
complement. Perfection is not something to be strived for, for perfection is
Dynamic and always changing and cannot be pigeonholed into a this or a that.
>Bill:
>Ruthlessness is part of the means, as Glove well knows when he asks:
"…..there is more than a hint of ruthlessness in your personal confrontation
with the particular young man (my apprentice) you speak of, wouldn't you
agree?"
>
>Ruthlessness, empathy and compassion combined. Ruthlessness alone is just
a cold-blooded calculation such as what the Nazi's used.
Glove:
Doesn't all come down to what we care about? Paraphrasing Pirsig, deeply
felt caring about things should always be treated with suspicion. Why?
because it leads to fixation to the exclusion of all else, giving rise to a
stasis. Nazi Germany cared about the perfect race, obviously cared about it
deeply and sincerely, despite the horrendous results that valued that
pre-conditioned caring. That society was locked into a social level stasis
by deeply felt caring, to the exclusion of all else.
Bill:
Richard Budd heard this and said: 'You've gotta be kidding right???
'Cold-blooded Intellectualism'??? No way. Unless of course you feel that
executing any non-aryans is somehow an intellectually based plan."
>
>Well, I feel like the Nazi leaders used scapegoatism to whip up their even
more ignorant countrymen. They made a ghoulish mess with low-quality
intellectual, heartless, half-baked logic and then coldly brought forth
their final solution. A more biological level murderer would be a cannibal.
The Nazis saw themselves as thinking people rather then mere cannibals.
Today, people get marginalized by the corporate machines in a softer version
of what the Nazi's did. My point is that the word "ruthlessness" has such a
bad connotation to it because it represents intellect divorced from the
heart.
Glove:
First of all, cannibalism may have a social level function rather than
biological, just as the taboo on cannibalism is more of a social taboo than
biological. We 20th century people cringe at cannibalism, but ancients, and
even some peoples still living today, believed by ingesting parts of their
enemies, they would take that enemies personal power for their own. They
didn't exist solely on human flesh, and only ate certain parts of the
bodies, like the heart or the blood. This was an intergal part of their
social structure.
I do agree with you when you say people get marginalized into the machine,
and this too is a social level phenomena. But I disagree that Nazi Germany
used any sort of intellectualism... the heartlessness they showed was
culturally acceptable in their pursuit of social perfection, yet if examined
intellectually, it would have been proven unacceptable. Thus the persecution
of the intellectuals took place at the same time to consolidate the strength
of society.
>Bill:
>And Fred sticks up for the much-maligned hippies. He writes: " If not for
the hippie movement, The
>Vietnam war would have lasted many more years and thousands of more lives
>would have been lost to this futile and corrupt war."
>
>Yes, Peace, Love and Understanding. And carrying a big stick. And not
being naïve. And not lapsing into cold-blooded, low quality intellectual
choices. All of the above, in rt sync, and laws that reflect that. Until
mankind in general has developed a high proclivity for doing the right
thing. And doesn't require blind adherence to the old written dharma. And
can ride his bike without the training wheels.
Glove:
We are all held in check by the cultures we inhabit, which force us all to
be that which that culture wants us to be. Dropping out of the culture was
the Hippie trademark, and that is not the answer, as history has taught us.
Tune in, turn on, drop out... wasn't that how it went? On the other hand,
becoming immersed in the culture only leads to a life of slavery, even
though the bars may be made of gold.
So what's the "right" thing? What choices are there, for any of us?
Inorganically, no choice... biologically, no choice... socially, no
choice... intellectually, there is a choice, though that choice is only to
do the "right" thing, which resonates thru all four levels. And only a
living being can do that... society cannot, humankind in general cannot.
Only the individual can do the "right" thing, by being of the culture but
not trapped in the culture...
Best wishes,
glove
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:59 BST