Clark, Mary, Bill, Platt and all Philosophers:
What's the difference between the History of U.S. foreign policy and
progaganda? What is the difference between historical facts and
patriotic myths? These two sentences ask the same question.
Clark, could you possibly provide a more biased, less credible source
for this issue than AIR FORCE MAGAZINE? I don't think so. Its like
trusting Texaco to fairly analyze the enviromental impact of oil spills.
Its like depending on NRA to address gun control without bias. Its like
relying on the fox to gaurd the hen-house. Its like trusting Sylvester
to babysit tweetybird. It was the Air Force, after all, who dropped
those bombs and we should hardly be suprized that they would seek to
justify it, both before and after the fact.
Historians make bad soldiers and soldiers make bad Historians. Its that
simple. Can you image the disasters we'd encounter if every Private in
every fox hole were an intellectual? We'd lose every battle. The
disaster is equally devistating when minds trained in duty, loyalty and
obedience get into the business of writing History. AIR FORCE MAGAZINE
is about the last place one should look for an unbiased view. JUDGEMENT
AT THE SMITHSONIAN is about the battle between Historians and VETERANS
groups. If the battle were between two sets of Historians I might take
it more seriously. Veterans and the publishers of military magazines
have a serious conflict-of-interest problem here, don't you think?
Bill's description of uncle SAM as the social level giant was helpful. I
think it is safe to say that the Air Force is one of many spokesmen for
the giant. The military is very much a social level institution and has
many values in common with the giant. On that level most of us are happy
that SAM beat the Axis powers and held back the Soviet giant, but the
Historical facts are another thing altogether.
Mary's repeated use of the word "revisionism" reveals a bias too. The
word is used by the right in the culture war as a rhetorical grenade.
Any history that contradicts the patriotic view is labeled revisionist.
I'd take the charge more seriously if it came from a substantial number
of Historians, but it doesn't. Almost everyone who uses the word
disparagingly is not a Historian. Instead the label is used by talk show
hosts, preachers, vets and conservative politicians. I'm not suggesting
Mary is any of these, just that she is saying the same thing they do
about the writing of History. (I'm not a historian, but it was my major
in college, and have some idea about how research is conducted in the
field.) This very debate is just one of many anti-intellectual stances
taken by the right.
Platt, thanks for the relevant quotes concerning the dark side of the
intellecual level. I think the passages you picked are very helpful to
this debate, but I draw very different conclusions than you do. You seem
to think that Pirsig's warnings about the intellect un-do his
ontological scheme, in which the intellectual level is the most evolved,
free and moral level of the four. I think it is a mistake to see
Pirsig's cautionary words as an endorsement of social values over
intellectual values. He was just pointing out that the intellectual
level has been burdened by a mistaken view, namely subject/object
metaphysics. In fact it was this same amoral scientific objectivity that
allowed the development and deployment of atomic weapons in the first
place. These bombs sere created and used in a moral vaccum. As Pirsig
said, "From the perspective of subject-object science, the world is a
completely purposeless, valueless place...Nothing is right and nothing
is wrong. Everything just functions like machinery. There is nothin
wrong with lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with
GENOCIDE.".
Pirsig is warning against the amoral objectivity used by the intellect,
not the intellect itself. If he believed that the intellect was
inherently amoral he would not have put it at the highest level of
creation and he would not have tried to resuce our intellecutal views
from SOM thinking. The MOQ tries to repair a flaw in the intellect, but
it certainly doesn't put the social level above the intellect.
Finally, History is just another branch of science and suffers from the
same SOM problems as any other field of inquiry, but less so. History
relies on verifiable "objective" facts and peer review like all the
other sciences, but it is also an art. History doesn't disregaurd social
level mediation to the same extent that the physical sciences do. Its
about people and their actions and motives. Its about the power and
influence of beliefs and ideas.
(That was my main concern at school, I studied philosophy and literature
to compliment my courses in History and so basically studied
intellectual history or the history of ideas, which is not quite as
pretentious as it sounds. I graduated from Hillsdale College, by the
way, one of the most conservative schools in the nation.)
History has come along way since the days when the history of Ceasar
would be written by Ceaser's buddy. No one wants that kind of biased
reporting. On the other hand it is nearly impossible to be as
"objective" as a mathematician or physicist in the writing of History.
And obviously, Pirsig himself uses history and the concept of historical
change repeatedly to underscore his ideas. His alter-ego Phaedrus is the
ghost of a mind unpolluted by SOM logic, a figure who can escape what
Pirsig warns against, namely amoral scientific objectivity, yet he is
highly intellectual.
Now we're talkin'
David B.
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