From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Jul 29 2005 - 15:32:57 BST
Hi Arlo,
> [Arlo]
> I'm suggesting that no "culture" has a monopoly on high-Quality views, and
> that exposure to other cultural perspectives can help us see things our own
> cultural lens filters out. Such as Pirsig becoming aware of the "green
> flash". Or his description of Eastern cultures that are not so "I"-centric.
I would suggest "high quality" and cultural perspectives do no necessarily
go together, a less "I" centric Eastern view being a case in point..
> [Platt]
> Do you object to Pirsig's use of "biological crime?"
>
> [Arlo]
> No. Had he referred to the individuals as "biological criminals" then I
> would object.
Seems to me that biological crime is what criminals do.
> [Arlo]
> Just a question (one I freely admit is a non-sequitar :-)). Do you think
> "talking abstinence works?" Why? Isn't that "talking" against a "biological
> Quality pattern"?
Good question. Fear of consequences, of punishment, can help deter
biological behavior.
> At any rate, the point is that NEITHER the policeman or the criminal are
> "biological". They both USE biological violence. One has social
> justification, one does not.
It's the one who doesn't have social justification who is less moral in
the MOQ structure.
> [Platt]
> Pirsig made no excuses for criminal behavior. He didn't say crime was
> justified because of poverty, rage, or frustration. The problem, he said,
> was leniency in attacking crime, brought on by liberal intellectuals of the
> sixties who blamed criminal behavior on the "cruel and corrupt social
> system."
>
> [Arlo]
> Because, as I've said, criminal behavior was defined as behavior that
> pursued biological quality to the threat of social quality. It had no other
> motivation. It had no social or ideological component. It was simply
> biological urges to steal, rape, take drugs, commit murder, and whatnot.
> Using biological violence against this makes perfect sense.
I hope your not suggesting that the problem of black crime that Pirsig
used as context was because blacks simply have "biological urges." That
goes everything you've said about "social causes" of crime.
> But the "terrorists" are not "criminals pursuing only biological quality".
> They are being motivated by social and (possibly, as I've just responded to
> Bo) intellectual patterns. You can't shoot kill these with a gun.
A pattern that says "murder all who don't agree with you" is a biological,
not a social pattern.
> And if WE are going to condemn THEM killing our non-combattants, then we
> must also condemn US killing THEIR non-combattants. Flying a plane into a
> tower is a horrible, evil action, that deserves to be scorned. But dropping
> a bomb on a village inhabited by people who had NOTHING to do with that is
> also a horrible, evil action that deserves to be scorned.
So we were wrong to bomb Germany and Japan in WW II?
> As was selling the Iraqis guns to kill Iranians, and the Iranians guns to
> kill Iraqis, all to keep the region destabilized and protect the price of
> oil. Immorality is immorality.
How does it make sense to protect the price of oil by destabilizing the
region?
> Your problem is that you refuse to believe
> America is capable of it. The reduction of Iraqis to "biological" and the
> US to "social" is part of that.
Your problem is you refuse to believe there's a moral difference between
fighting to preserve a biological level worldview of force and an
intellectual level worldview of freedom and individual rights.
> [Platt]
> IMO he could say the same about liberal intellectuals of today who blame
> terrorism on everything but the terrorists. Tony Blair, who I think you
> will agree is no dummy, put it bluntly and truthfully: "Their cause is not
> founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is
> such it can't be moderated."
>
> [Arlo]
> Religious fanatacism is surely a threat to intellectual freedom, and drives
> threats to other religion's social patterns, whether it is Islamic or
> Christian or Buddhism (well, I'd actually pay to see that one :-)). But
> here you freely admit it is a "social level" conflict. Islamic
> fundamentalism with American capitalism.
Uncritical devotion (fanaticism) to murder is not social level.
By the way, that reminds me of a joke. Q. What do you call a ship load of
liberal professors headed to China? A: A good start.
Ta boom. :-)
Platt
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