From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Nov 29 2003 - 21:36:04 GMT
Marc asked:
Do people really think there is something going on as a social crisis?
dmb replies:
Chapter 24 of Lila provides lots of clues about the social crisis he's
talking about...
"By the end of the sixties the intellectualism of the twenties found itself
in an impossible trap. If it continued to advocate more freedom from
Victorian social restraint, all it would get was more Hippies, who were
really just taking its anti-Victorianism to an extreme. If, on the other
hand, it advocated more constructive social conformity in opposition to the
Hippies, all it would get was more Victorians, in the form of the
reactionary right."
"The end of the twentieth century in America seems to be an intellectual,
social and economic rust-belt, a whole society that has given up on Dynamic
improvement and is slowly trying to slip back to Victorianism, the last
static ratchet-latch. More Dynamic foreign cultures are overtaking it and
actually invading it becasue it's now incapable of competeing. What's coming
out the urban slums, where old Victorian social moral codes are almost
completely destroyed, isn't any new paradise the revolutionaries hoped for,
but a reversion to rule by terror, violence and gang death - the old
biological might-makes right morality of prehistoric brigandage that
primitive societies were set up to overcome."
"Its this intellectual pattern of amoral "objectivity" that is to blame for
the social deterioration of America, because it has undermined the static
social values necessary to prevent deterioration. In its condemnation of
social repression as the enemy of liberty, it has never come forth with a
single moral principle that distinguishes a Galileo fighting social
repression from a common criminal fighting social repression. It has, as a
result, been the champion of both. That's the root of the problem. Phaedrus
remembered parites in the fifties and sixties full of liberal intellectuals
like himself who actually admired the criminal types that sometimes showed
up."
dmb adds:
The murder rate in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, for example,
was just over one in one hundred thousand. By the twenties and thirties it
has increased by about 800%. It dropped back to about half of that, about
five in one hundred thousand, after WW2. But it was back up to nine and ten
per one hundred thousand throughout the 70's and 80's. When Lila was first
published, in 1991, the murder rate and the violent crime rate was at its
peak in America. It has been slowly dropping as this country moves to the
political right, but is still at about 5 or 6/100,000.
Perhaps the reason that you wonder what social crisis Pirsig is talking
about is that your nation presently enjoys a very low rate of murder. Very
few Western nations do better than the Dutch in this respect. Expect for
Northern Ireland, the UK does pretty well too. Both look like the U.S did a
hundred years ago, enjoying a rat of just over one per 100,000.
When it comes to murder, only South Africa and the former Soviet nations are
worse than the United States. (Respectively, about 50 and 20 per.) But these
places have recently suffered from major social upheaval, making these
numbers something of an temporary quirk.
Finally, it seems to me that what we have now in the United States is the
worst of both worlds. We are slipping back into Victorianism, "in the form
of a reactionary right" that is not only destructive of intellectual freedom
but that also rules by "terror, violence and gang death - the old biological
might-makes right morality". What we have running things now, the
neo-conservatives, are basically Victorian thugs.
Thanks,
dmb
"Fascism should more properly be called corportism becasue it is the merger
of state and corparate power." Benito Mussolini
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a
farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to
come back to his farm in one piece? ..That is understood. But after all it
is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a
simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship... Voice
or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leader,
That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifist for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger." Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg trials
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