From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Sun Feb 16 2003 - 18:38:31 GMT
Hi David,
> DMB says:
>... the law of the jungle is much more oppressive and that social values
make us
> free. There are many more choices even in a regimented civilization than
> there are in the wilderness. Pirsig says cops and soldiers have always
been
> around to make sure we don't have to live in the wilderness. (I like the
> ancient penalty of exile. If you can't be civilized, they put you back
into
> the jungle.)You get the idea. But this in only part of the necessity of
the
> social level. It shapes us in every way. Its what makes us human, more
than
> animals. Its what allows us to think and talk, gives us our desires and
> conceptual categories, ideas of rights and wrong. Its most of what we are.
> Its as necessary as the body.
I was more looking at the 'cops and soldiers' bit, but your further comments
are suggestive. Are all those latter elements ("Its what allows us to think
and talk, gives us our desires and conceptual categories, ideas of rights
and wrong") products of fertilisation from the intellectual level, or are
they intrinsic to the social?
> DMB says:
> But laws that
> try to control offensive or subversive ideas strike are out of bounds.
> Instead we write laws to insure that we minimizes society's traditional
> retraints on intellectual freedom. Thus the seperation of church and
state...
> You could say
> the giant get very angry at certain kinds of "independent" thinkers,
> especially the ones that criticize the giant.
Could you explain the way in which the separation of church and state does
not rule out *some* categories of intellectual endeavour (eg theocratic
arguments)? I guess you would say that such arguments were by definition
non-intellectual, but that seems to be begging the question.
Sam
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