From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sat Jul 12 2003 - 02:13:06 BST
Johnny,
(I've changed the subject line. Was: racism in the forum)
> The culture doesn't have an intellectual level, the intellectual level has
> the culture. Your viewpoint is disturbing in its implications, I do agree
> with Squonk that it is racist to call a culture inferior, especially when
> that quote about "killing the germ" is so widely disseminated, it makes it
> seem that it would be OK to kill that culture.
Technically, one should call it "ethnocentrism", not "racism". One culture
can contain different races, and two cultures can be of the same race.
Anyway, one only kills the germ when it threatens the survival of the human.
The MOQ justifies killing only when the lower threatens the higher (and then
only if killing is the only option.)
I do not know if one can say that there has been any case where one can say
that two cultures came into conflict where one had an intellectual level and
the other didn't. There have been many cultures that left no written
records, so we can't tell. All we know is when cultures with written records
ran into ones without, that the ones with written records tended to
overwhelm the ones without, but whether or not the ones without had no or
little "intellect" is unknowable. Regardless, the overwhelming was done for
reasons other than the intellectual striving to dominate the social. It was
done out of desire for more land, fear, and ethnocentrism, and was
accomplished by having greater numbers and better technology -- by being
able to win wars, in other words, which is a social strength, not an
intellectual one. The intellectual level is that which rises above
ethnocentrism to cicumvent the social immune system, so it can see value in
other cultures and want to learn from them, rather than destroy them because
they are different. The only time the MOQ has something to say against a
culture is when a culture that values free intellectual activity is
threatened by one that doesn't. If that isn't the case, the MOQ would
condemn the strong killing the weak since the weak may have interesting
social and intellectual patterns that would be lost.
I suppose you would advocate
> replacing the cultures of those peoples that are not propogating
> intellectual patterns with our culture, which is exactly what tends to
> happen, and what Pirsig seemed to advocate in the killing of Zuni culture.
> I guess he feels that the Zuni people weren't killed, but rather were
freed
> from their inferior culture.
I can't say that I know of any such cultures, but if one exists, it should
only be killed if killing it is the only way one's own culture (presumably
one supporting free intellectual activity) can survive. That's all the MOQ
says. The Zunis, by the way, are still alive as a culture, with their own
government and ceremony (though like all Native American communities,
subject to the whim of the government of the US, so not truly sovereign).
The point of the Zuni story in Lila was that the brujo was the one who
realized that the Anglo threat was too strong, so the Zunis had to morph so
as to survive; the point was not that the threatening Anglo culture was
superior. It just had more numbers and power. (Actually, by the time of the
story, the Zunis had been living alongside -- and was pretty well dominated
by -- the Spanish culture for two centuries.)
- Scott
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