At 12:12 AM -0700 11/17/99, David Buchanan wrote:
<snip>
>the
>struggle between social and intellectual values is what drives the
>political conflicts of our time.
I agree. I also agree that it is a fascinating theory in that it isn't
found in history books or schools, but is the best explanation I've ever
heard.
I'm especially fascinated, because I believe we live during a time that
illustrates the theory perfectly: the current forum in which we're
discussing this is relevant to the issue at hand. I believe the internet
is primarily of intellectual origin and is in the process of changing the
social order profoundly.
I've been studying the Open Source Movement for some time, and find many
analogies to quality. What makes some guy spend so much time developing
free code? When they discuss it, they almost sound as if they're quoting
ZAMM. Heck, maybe they are, It is a pretty popular book in colleges and
especially the nerd crowd.
But I digess. The pursuit of quality programming vs paid programming is
very much intellectualism vs social status/money.
And usually the social systems in place are too strong and oppressive to
allow too-rapid deployment of new ideas. But the creation of networked
humanity (or evolution from homo sapiens to homo netted if you're not a
creationist) has occured far too rapidly for the society's comfort.
But as you say.. so many topics, so little time!
snip>
>Anarchy in this sense is not chaos and a reverstion to the jungle, but
>a state-less society based on voluntary co-operation.
See, the social inference is always that without properly defined social
government, the masses will fall back to the biological level - law of the
jungle. Anarchy means no government. No government means slipping down to
the biological level. That's the socially impressed "truth" and when we
are talking to people, we have to meet them at their level of social
awareness so I think a differnt term needs to be used.
A democracy of people whose sense of values is derived from TV is actually
government by a megacorp construct answerable only to profits and growth
and thus sole interest is to persuade all into producing the consumption so
they can consume the production. I don't know what you'd call that kind of
government.
Bad quality is what I call it.
But a government of voluntary co-operation could describe communism or
democracy either one, I think. How you organize men into units and
subunits isn't the important point. The question is what kind of men do
you find in those units?
I'd say the seventh level is when those men share common and correct values -
the Qualarchy. Men governed by quality - that which is best, never mind
what is expedient or pays off my cronies or smoothes the way for me to
attain highest office. Government by men of Quality.
Everybody knows it when they see it. How come we see so little of it?
>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.
Hmmm... I wish I had more time to respond to that.
> But
>the point is that anarchy represents an outlook that is very far removed
>from social values.
I agree, but remember there are two directions you can go when slipping
away from social values, one is the low quality direction back into
biological impulse, the other is high quality toward government of
intellect. Anarchy isn't a good term because it doesn't specify and too
many people use it who want to shun victorian stricture and enjoy all the
drugs they can consume and all the sex they can find without any regard to
social consequences. Society has a right and proper role in repressing
such behaviour and if we call our goal "Anarchy" then we'd be confusing a
lot of people.
Of course, the term Qualarchy would probably confuse even more people...
jc
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