jc and all philosophers: A few thoughts in response to jc's Monday
post....
Thanks for spending the time. Your posts were a blast of fresh air. I'll
have to save some of the biggest and juiciest topics for another time.
Questions such as "What is evil?" and "What is the connection between
society and the Tao?" deserve their own threads, a focused and sustained
conversation of their own.
It does seem that the blindness axiom can be demonstrated in real life,
such as the conversations with "Dad". In those cases it seems that there
are two completely seperate conversations going on. I mean, both people
can use the same language, but that doest meant they're speaking the
same language, if you know what I mean. But then again, he's probably
right about steady work. There is also an axiom about not skipping
levels either.
And the phrase "comparative ideology" correctly describes that 7th stage
in the hierarchy. I think we agree on the meaning of such an outlook.
But the part of your post I wanted to address with some detail is the
issue of political labels. As you said, people have their own ideas
about the meaning of words like "conservative", "liberal" and
"socialist"..etc. Its easy to confuse specific people or even nations
with the "ism" itself. For example, the Chinese state is called the
"People's Republic of China". In what sense is it a Republic? And why
doesn't the Anerican Republican party suppport them wholeheartedly? See?
It can become quite absurd. Part of the beauty of Waslby and Pirsig is
that they both describe this stuff outside of the political arena and
can call a spade a spade, so to speak.
This comes from the first few pages of chapter 22, page 274 in Bantam's
HB edition...
"The hurricane of social forces released by the overthrow of society by
intellect was most strongly felt in Europe, particularly in Germany,
where the effects of WW1 were most devastating. Communism and socialism,
programs for intellectual control over society, were confronted by the
reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the social control of
intellect. Nowhere were the intellectuals more intense in their
determination to overthrow the old order. Nowhere did the old order
bocome more intent on finding ways to destroy the excesses of the new
intellectualism."
"Phaedrus thought that no other historical or political analysis
explains the enormity of these forces as clearly as does the MOQ. The
gigantic power of socialism and fascisim, which have overwhelmed this
century, is explained by a CONFLICT OF LEVELS of evolution. This
conflict explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane
search for power but as an all-consuming glorification of SOCIAL
AUTHORITY and HATRED OF INTELLECTUALISM. His anti-Semitism was fueled by
by anti-intellectualism. His hatred of communists was fueled by
anti-intellectualism. His exaltation of the German volk was fueled by
it. His fanatic persecution of any kind of intellectual freedom was
driven by it." Pirsig then goes on to say a few nice things about FDR's
NEW DEAL as an attempt at an intellectually centered government, the
approximate opposite of Hitler's fascism.
You can see that I've added emphasis to "conflict of levels", "social
authority" and "hatred of intellectualism" because this is exactly what
I've been trying to discuss and its the reason I posted the hierarchy of
ideologies. The theory seems to support Pirsig's contention that the
struggle between social and intellectual values is what drives the
political conflicts of our time. Perhaps you recall that theory also
described fascist as one who identifies entirely with his society's
traditions and values, a conservative shares much in common with the
fascist, but tends to be less paranoid and hostile. aHe might be willing
to try something nes, as long as its aim it to preserve those social
values. The liberal is also essentially happy with the status quo, but
thinks social vaules themselves could be improved through some changes.
But then there is a shift, in their words from "static" to "dynamic",
but from they way it is described we can tell that the shift is from
social to intellectual values. The socialist, the revolutionary and the
anarchists identify with the intellectual principles.
(Anarchy in this sense is not chaos and a reverstion to the jungle, but
a state-less society based on voluntary co-operation. This is too
utopian for my taste and I think Pirsig's insistence that we can't skip
any of the levels on the way to intellect would defy such a utopia. But
the point is that anarchy represents an outlook that is very far removed
from social values.)
In chapter 24, just as he's getting to the moral codes he says...
"But what the larger intellectual structure of the MOQ makes clear is
that this political battle of science to free itself form domination by
social codes was in fact a MORAL battle".
And this time the emphasis on the word "moral" is Pirsig's.
Gotta fly... DMB
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