From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Aug 06 2005 - 00:46:52 BST
Sam, Ant and all MOQers:
Sam said to Ant:
By the way, for the record, I've never agreed with Platt that terrorists
should be seen as biological... However, in Platt's defense I think that his
language CAN be defended by appeal to RMP, who is just as guilty of using
that language. ("it's a war of criminal blacks... against social blacks").
Denying that he can do this seems to have more to do with hero-worship of
RMP than the plain sense of RMPs words.
dmb says:
You've got to be kidding. If hero-worship means using misquotes out of
context that totally misconstrue the meaning and confuse the issue, then you
must be President of the fan club. Basic reading comprehension skills are
all a person needs in order to see that RMP is NOT making the kind of racist
remarks that have been under scrutiny here. Here'show he uses "that
language". The emphasis is Pirsig's...
"It is immoral to speak agains a people because of the color of their skin,
or any other genetic characteristic because these are not changable and
don't matter anyway. But it is not immoral to speak against a person because
of his cultural characteristics if those cultural characteristics are
immoral. These are changable and they do matter.
Blacks have no right to violate social codes and call it 'racism' when
someone tries to stop them, if those codes are not racist codes. That is
slander. The fight to sustain social codes isn't a war of blacks vs. whites
or Hispanics vs. blacks, or poor people vs. rich people or even stupid
people vs. intelligent people, or any other of allthe other possible
cultural confrontations. Its a war of biology vs. society.
Its a war of BIOLOGICAL blacks and BIOLOGICAL whites against SOCIAL blacks
and SOCIAL whites. Genetic patterns just confuse the matter. And this is a
war in which intellect, to end the paralysis of society, has to know whose
side it is on, and support that side, and never undercut it."
dmb continues:
If I may be allowed to summarize the main point here; racism is immoral and
race is totally freakin' irrelevant to the issue anyway.
Ant said:
>Finally, while I do agree with Sam to some extent that the key issue is
>deciding which is the better society (i.e. which society best contributes
>to the evolution of life), I would rather rephrase it in less black and
>white terms, and see it as a process as indicated in Northrop's and
>Pirsig's work as rationally deciding what elements from all the major
>cultures we would like to use -- as one global community - to improve our
>quality of life in the future. At the bottom line (as indicated in
>Buddhism and Taoism) there is no "us and them" (whoever and whatever "us
>and them" are) but just an "us".
dmb says:
I also think the terms are too stark. Its not like we determine which
society is better and then destroy the loser for not being good enough. I
think the idea behind the assertion that "it is not immoral to speak agains
a person because of his cultural characteristic if those cultural
characteristics are immoral" is that it allows us to condemn terrorists
without so much confusion about what it is we are speaking against. I think
the problem with it is obvious; terrorist kill non-combatants in such a way
that it is much more like murder than war.
But let's not pretend that a person has to be crazy or under the spell of
some evil culture before they will believe that its noble to give one's life
to protect a nation or a cause. We give medals for that shit too. That's
what soldiers are expected to do in every nation.
And let's not pretend that Tim McViegh and Eric Rudolf are anything other
than white, Christian terrorists. We have our share of muderous thugs too.
Every culture has them. But these are not the biological criminals discussed
in chapter 24. See, what they all have in common is a conviction and a
passion for social values. They want to be the dead heros of that cause and
be remembered for it just as in Homer's day. Its not about biological
pleasure. Despite all the talk about heavenly virgins, what they seek is
honor. I know. I think its twisted too, but if we really want to understand
their motives, I think we need to be a little more realistic and a little
less condescending. These guys are not from Mars and if the situation were
reversed, what would you do?
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