From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sat Feb 08 2003 - 21:39:26 GMT
Mari,
I think when you, John, and Rudy first started posting at around the same
time and started asking about what we can do outside of this discussion
group, I was pretty quick to answer with a position pretty much like
Scott's. Ironically, it's for reasons that Scott has disagreed to in the past.
It's obvious you really want to do something, to gather support and affect
change. And like Scott, all I can say is, "More power to you." Pirsig has
affected us all in a multitude of varying ways. That's why we are here.
And to urge us to look at our actions and how they match up with what
Pirsig says is also a wonderful suggestion, one we should all take. But to
take the next step and suggest that we should come together and form a
lobbyist group, I think that that is the step too far. People are wary of
such a move and/or just not up to it.
I happen to be both wary and not up to it. The wariness stems from the
public/private split that was thrown on the table (which is what Scott
disagrees with). What this practical split suggests is that we keep our
private searches for self-perfection out of our discussions of public
policy. This means no God when discussing welfare and no Quality when
discussing education. Because if you bring up God or Quality in your
defense of why we need more/less money for welfare or education and your
conversation partner doesn't know what you mean by them, then the
conversation is cut short. That's something we don't want when trying to
move good policy forward. Now, even after we adhere to this split, we
could still form a group of MoQers who lobbied for certain public reforms,
even while leaving Quality out of the public discussions. Quality might be
the impetus behind our reforms, but it doesn't have to enter the debate.
My wariness stems from the example set by the Christian Coalition, another
group of people gathered under the banner of a private route towards
self-perfection to affect social change. Their fundamentalism and attempts
to bring God back into public discussions is what I fear. Atheists like
myself and Kevin don't know what to say when Pro-lifers defend their
position with an invocation of God. We don't think that's a valid argument
because we don't share a crucial premise: belief in the existence of God.
When they reply that the fact that we don't share the crucial premise
doesn't disprove its truth, we can only shrug our shoulders and say, "But
it's still not a valid argument."
DMB and I might be able to come to agreement on a lot of public policy
issues. From what I understand, DMB is a bit of a leftist. But we aren't
discussing public policy, we are discussing philosophy. That's Scott and
my point. If people would like to discuss public policy, then they can.
But I don't think we should expect everyone to jump on board, just because
they've read Pirsig. So when you say, "if David and Matt for instance quit
looking for good 'arguments' and points to make and disagree about/on and
instead looked to focus on what good could come from 'agreement' ... i
think 'Great Stuff' could take on a whole new look." Maybe if DMB and I
did focus on a "practical goal" we'd be able do "great stuff" (though I
don't know who that agreement would happen without argumentation). But I
doubt that if Platt and I put our heads together we'd get the same output.
From what I understand, Platt is a bit of a rightist.
So, like Scott, I wish you luck. But I'm sorry, no amount of cajoling is
going to shame me into discussing public policy here ;-)
Matt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Feb 08 2003 - 21:34:23 GMT