From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri May 07 2004 - 16:21:38 BST
Hi Mark H,
PH:
> <<What I'd like to know is what you think
> about Pirsig's moral structure of reality, especially the moral
> necessity of social level patterns keeping biological patterns under
> control and killing them, like germs, if necessary?
MH
> Given the nature of our previous exchanges, I know you'll understand
> my reluctance to comment on your interpretation of Pirsig without
> supporting documentation. Please provide relevant textual citations, with
> page numbers so that I may read in context.
>
> Thanks,
Happy to oblige. My references are to chapters because I work from a hard
cover edition of Lila while most here use a soft cover edition. So (Lila,
10) means the passage is from Chapter 10 of Lila. It shouldn't be too hard
to find the passage given that reference.
Here are the relevant passages:
"In general, given a choice of two courses to follow and all other things
being equal, that choice which is more Dynamic, that is, at a higher level
of evolution, is more moral. An example of this is the statement that,
"It's more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than to allow the germ to
kill his patient." The germ wants to live. The patient wants to live. But
the patient has moral precedence because he's at a higher level of
evolution.Taken by itself that seems obvious enough. But what's not so
obvious is that, given a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality, it is
absolutely, scientifically moral for a doctor to prefer the patient. This
is not just an arbitrary social convention that should apply to some
doctors but not to all doctors, or to some cultures but not all cultures.
It's true for all people at all times, now and forever, a moral pattern of
reality as real as H20. We're at last dealing with morals on the basis of
reason. We can now deduce codes based on evolution that analyze moral
arguments with greater precision than before." (Lila, 13)
"An evolutionary morality would at first seem to say yes, a society has a
right to murder people to prevent its own destruction. A primitive
isolated village threatened by brigands has a moral right and obligation
to kill them in self-defense since a village is a higher form of
evolution. When the United States drafted troops for the Civil War
everyone knew that innocent people would be murdered. The North could have
permitted the slave states to become independent and saved hundreds of
thousands of lives. But an evolutionary morality argues that the North was
right in pursuing that war because a nation is a higher form of evolution
than a human body, and the principle of human equality is an even higher
form than a nation. John Brown's truth was never an abstraction. It still
keeps marching on." (Lila, 13)
"The idea that biological crimes can be ended by intellect alone, that you
can talk crime to death, doesn't work. Intellectual patterns cannot
directly control biological patterns. Only social patterns can control
biological patterns, and the instrument of conversation between society
and biology is not words. The instrument of conversation between society
and biology has always been a policeman or a soldier and his gun. In the
battle of society against biology, the new twentieth-century intellectuals
have taken biology's side. Society can handle biology alone by means of
prisons and guns and police and the military. But when the intellectuals
in control of society take biology's side against society then society is
caught in a cross fire from which it has no protection." (Lila, 24)
I refer you back to my original question above. Do you agree with Pirsig's
moral structure as exemplified in the above quotes?
Best,
Platt
P.S. I changed the topic for obvious reasons.
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