From: Ant McWatt (antmcwatt@hotmail.co.uk)
Date: Tue May 10 2005 - 16:27:29 BST
Platt stated May 9th:
Don't you believe it, Ham. There have been a number of conservative
contributors to MOQ Discuss over the years.
Ant McWatt comments:
There’s only really been one conservative contributor and for all his
right-wing propaganda since 1997 I hope he’s receiving a handsome salary
from somewhere.
Platt stated May 9th:
Like me, they have found plenty in Pirsig's philosophy to support right-wing
ideas, the most notable being the MOQ's view that freedom is the highest
value of all.
Ant McWatt comments:
The important difference is – and this keeps going over your head just like
a dog continually shown a card trick - is that the MOQ view of freedom is
different from the capitalist view of freedom. Let’s repeat our mantra
together for the benefit of the slower members of the congregation: “the MOQ
view of freedom is different from the capitalist view of freedom.” This
difference is implied by Pirsig’s observation in Chapter 17 of LILA: “The
conservatives who keep trumpeting about the virtues of free enterprise are
normally just supporting their own self-interest. They are just doing the
usual cover-up for the rich in their age-old exploitation of the poor.” The
latter is definitely not an MOQ sentiment.
For instance, Bush Junior would say that the best society is one where
individuals (rational autonomous end choosers) have the best possible scope
to exercise their own interests and choices. However, the MOQ being a
universal system and a development of Zen Buddhism would suggest that the
overall welfare of everyone (i.e. the world’s population) must be maximised
(or, efforts to reach this ideal must be made as far as it’s practical). In
other words, there’s a move in the MOQ from being concerned with just one’s
own selfish interests (as in capitalism) towards the universal interests of
everyone. The greatest overall freedom is provided by the latter though it
will occasionally mean that individual freedoms (such as the freedom to
extremely pollute the global environment) will be restricted. The MOQ view
of freedom is not only more moral and responsible but more rational because
we live on a planet with finite resources and, unfortunately, a rapidly
growing population.
Platt stated May 9th:
Few conservatives have time to contribute regularly to this site because
they
are fully engaged in doing and have little time left over for talking.
Ant McWatt comments:
Christ, this made me laugh. You do know that lies make Baby Jesus cry,
don’t you Platt? The truth about the matter is that serious left-wing
people tend to be better quality thinkers, more tolerant, more caring, more
liberal, more generous with their time. These higher quality sentiments are
reflected by the MOQ so that is why anyone on this Discussion group
promoting conservative ideas looks very much like a crank. The great thing
about Pirsig in this respect, is that despite being very much against
right-wing ideology (being one of the original hippies in the 1950s), he
still took the best element of traditional conservative economic thinking
(namely genuine free markets – not the government supported ones we have in
the West) and incorporated them in the MOQ. A true pragmatist.
Anyway, any right-winger worthy of the name uses philosophy books only as
doorstops and has a number of underpaid lackeys working hard to make him a
big profit while he is trundling around his local golf course. ;-)
Ant continued:
>Furthermore, as I have noted to Platt
>previously, the trick is not to be too hung up on supporting any one
>particular ideology (such as capitalism or socialism) but to take a step
>back and pragmatically assess the merits of each political system. Hence,
>Pirsig’s attempt to combine capitalism’s use of free markets (in the social
>realm) with socialism’s emphasis on economic intellectual control and sense
>of fairness.
Platt stated May 9th:
Pirsig attempted to "combine" capitalism and socialism and proposed
intellectual control of the economy in the name of "fairness?." That's
news to me. Can you supply some quotes to support that conclusion?
Ant McWatt comments:
Yes, I can. For instance, see the following paragraphs from Chapter 17 of
LILA:
“That's what neither the socialists nor the capitalists ever got figured
out. From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism.
It's a higher form of evolution. It is an intellectually guided society,
not just a society that is guided by mindless traditions. That's what
gives socialism its drive. But what the socialists left out and what has
all but killed their whole undertaking is an absence of a concept of
indefinite Dynamic Quality. You go to any socialist city and it's always a
dull place because there's little Dynamic Quality.”
“On the other hand the conservatives who keep trumpeting about the virtues
of free enterprise are normally just supporting their own self-interest.
[REMEMBER MY OBSERVATION ABOVE ABOUT MOQ FREEDOM BEING DIFFERENT FROM
CAPITALIST FREEDOM!] They are just doing the usual cover-up for the rich in
their age-old exploitation of the poor. Some of them seem to sense there is
also something mysteriously virtuous in a free enterprise system and you can
see them struggling to put it into words but they don't have the
metaphysical
vocabulary for it any more than the socialists do.”
“The Metaphysics of Quality provides the vocabulary. A free market is a
Dynamic institution. What people buy and what people sell, in other words
what people value, can never be contained by any intellectual formula.
What makes the marketplace work is Dynamic Quality. The market is always
changing and the direction of that change can never be predetermined.
The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes everybody richer by
preventing static economic patterns from setting in and stagnating economic
growth. That is the reason the major capitalist economies of the world
have done so much better since World War II than the major socialist
economies. It is not that Victorian social economic patterns are more
moral than socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite.
They are less moral as static patterns go.”
AND, A PAGE OR TWO LATER ON IN CHAPTER 17, JUST IN CASE YOU’RE THINKING
“WHAT ABOUT THE STATIC INTELLECTUAL CONTROLS OF THE ECONOMY IN THE NAME OF
"FAIRNESS?”:
“That's the whole thing: to obtain static and Dynamic Quality
simultaneously. If you don't have the static patterns of scientific
knowledge [WHICH ARE INTELLECTUAL PATTERNS] to build upon you're back with
the cave man. But if you don't have the freedom to change those patterns
you're blocked from any further growth.”
“You can see that where political institutions have improved throughout the
centuries the improvement can usually be traced to a static-Dynamic
combination: a king or constitution to preserve the static, and a
parliament or jury that can act as an Dynamic eraser; a mechanism whereby
new Dynamic insight can wipe out old static patterns without destroying the
government itself.”
“Phædrus was surprised by the conciseness of a commentary on Robert's Rules
of Order that seemed to capture the whole thing in two sentences: No
minority has a right to block a majority from conducting the legal business
of the organization. No majority has a right to prevent a minority from
peacefully attempting to become a majority. The power of those two
sentences [WHICH ARE AN INTELLECTUAL PATTERN] is that they create a stable
static situation where Dynamic Quality can flourish.”
“In the abstract, at least. When you get to the particular it's not so
simple.
It seems as though any static mechanism [SUCH AS THE MOQ VIEW OF ECONOMICS]
that is open to Dynamic Quality must also be open to degeneracy-to falling
back to lower forms of quality.”
“This creates the problem of getting maximum freedom for the emergence of
Dynamic Quality while prohibiting degeneracy from destroying the
evolutionary gains of the past. [THIS MEANS USING INTELLECTUAL CONTROL TO
PREVENT DEGENERACY] Americans like to talk about all their freedom but they
think it's disconnected from something Europeans often see in America: the
degeneracy [SUCH AS UNFAIR ECONOMIC RELATIONS] that goes with the Dynamic.”
Moreover, read a book about Buddhism such as Steve Hagen’s 1997 “Buddhism
Made Simple” (which Pirsig notes is the best text relating the MOQ and
Buddhist philosophy) or Walpola Rahula’s “What the Buddha Taught”. It
doesn’t take a genius to put the connections together in this context - just
an open mind.
I’ll be answering Ham’s post later on (and maybe taking up a point or two of
Sam’s)… when I return from the golf course. :-)
Best wishes,
Anthony.
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