From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Thu Sep 02 2004 - 07:14:00 BST
Dear Platt,
You wrote 17 Aug 2004 11:20:32 -0400:
'If I understand you gentlemen correctly, you're saying that (according to
the MOQ) equality is good within a society, that is, among the individuals
who are members of a society. To put it another way, no individual in a
given society ought to be considered better than another. In contrast,
equality is not good between societies, i.e., it's only right and proper
to consider that some societies are better than others.'
A certain amount of equality is necessary to maintain social stability. The
whole of humanity is part of one society (even if people also belong to
different sub-societies), so on a global scale a certain amount of equality
is also necessary.
A certain amount of equivalence of societies and of members of societies
should be recognized to maintain consistency of systems of ideas that deal
with the rights and duties of societies and their members. E.g. a system of
ideas that contains the idea that everyone is born with equal, unalienable
rights cannot allow too much difference in rights between those who belong
and don't belong to a specific society.
A certain amount of inequality and inequivalence is inevitable because of
competition among societies and among systems of ideas and is necessary for
social resp. intellectual evolution.
Both systems of ideas and societies can be judged as to how far they are
advanced in intellectual resp. social evolution: by their stability,
versatility and harmony with higher level patterns of value and openness to
DQ. Judging individuals is difficult, because the social and intellectual
patterns of value they identify with (and can be identified with) shift.
To the extent that my own ideas are clear and their consistency is not
challenged, I don't really care whether (and if yes, why) Pirsig's ideas are
inconsistent regarding equality.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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