From: Matt poot (mattpoot@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 21 2004 - 05:09:24 BST
Hello,
Just a quick question.
Would we be able to say that the human race is superior>?
Matt
>From: <ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: MD COSMOTHEISM
>Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 13:52:37 +0000
>
>Mark Heyman asked June 18th 2004:
>
>‘Has anyone read anything in Pirsig that might suggest that one "race"
>of humans is higher or lower than another in the moral hierarchy?’
>
>
>Paul Vogel replied June 18th 2004:
>
>‘Yes, it is clear that Pirsig in Lila almost makes just such a suggestion
>and
>then "chickens out" when his thoughts threaten to become "politically-
>incorrect", when he is describing the problem of crime in NYC and the
>"biologicals" that are like "germs" infecting the social body politic that
>threaten the very survival of Western Civilization that such a great city
>like NYC represents....’
>
>
>Ant McWatt comments:
>
>There are a number of substantive inaccuracies in the above paragraph
>concerning working class crime in New York.
>
>Firstly, Pirsig states quite clearly in LILA (Chapter 24) that it is
>immoral to speak
>against a person because of the colour of their skin or other biological
>characteristic:
>
>‘It is immoral to speak against a people because of the color of their
>skin, or any other genetic characteristic because these are not changeable
>and don't matter anyway.’
>
>
>Secondly, in the paragraph from which the above sentence is derived, Pirsig
>goes absolutely down the political line when discussing blacks in LILA i.e.
>
>‘It is not immoral to speak against a person because of his cultural
>characteristics if those cultural characteristics are immoral. These are
>changeable 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.’
>
>As is clearly apparent, therefore, Pirsig is courageously dealing with the
>issue of black criminality from an impartial view on an intellectual basis,
>neither being swayed by supposedly ‘political correct’ intellectuals nor by
>socially-orientated racists.
>
>That New York is such a Dynamic and therefore great place, is partly due to
>the myriad cultural influences it has absorbed over the last four
>centuries. If everyone who wasn’t culturally pure from NYC were now
>returned to their natural cultural background (Africa, Europe, China, etc)
>you’d be left with no-one at all or possibly just a few Native American
>Indians.
>
>That racists are driven by social values is quite clearly seen in the
>American Anthological Association Statement on ‘Race’ of May 17, 1998 cited
>recently by Mark Heyman. The ad hominen dismissal of Mark Heyman’s citing
>of this article doesn’t wash as the American Anthological Association is
>the professional organization representing anthropology as an academic
>subject in the United States and could not possibly be perceived (despite
>its other failings) as a “social-marxist” or a “politically-correct
>dogmatic” organization. In fact, the work of Boas and his followers (such
>as Mead, Kluckhohn, Kroeber etc who established and dominated the AAA for
>much of its history) were, if anything too extreme the other way i.e. they
>attributed too much influence of social value patterns on human behaviour.
>There are internet articles by Derek Freeman and Susan Wright for academic
>support for this view (as well as my own MOQ Textbook).
>
>Possibly, before continuing in his subsequent posts with his ad hominem
>remarks concerning Mark Heyman, Paul Vogel should have actually addressed
>the numerous points of the AAA statement and especially the conclusion in
>its last paragraph which states:
>
>“How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given
>society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society
>and that the ‘racial’ worldview was invented to assign some groups to
>perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege,
>power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the
>policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well
>in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and
>peoples of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of normal
>humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that
>present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not
>consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and
>contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances.”
>
>
>Paul Vogel commented on June 18th 2004:
>
>‘Perhaps, Pirsig only "chickened-out" because otherwise he just wouldn't
>have been ever published, as is seen by the case of such brave and honest
>authors like J. P. Rushton?’
>
>Ant McWatt comments:
>
>LILA was published seventeen years after ZMM so the above comment, in
>regard to Pirsig, is again just nonsense. As regards J. P. Rushton, it
>seems that he is pretty typical of the type of racist driven by materially
>orientated social values as noted in the above AAA article. Moreover, from
>examining Mark Heyman’s recent posts on the subject, it seems that Rushton
>has very low quality credentials to make any scientific comment concerning
>the relationship between biological value patterns and human behaviour. I
>also wonder what he’s spending all that “Pioneer Fund” money on.
>
>Finally, Paul Vogel commented on June 16th 2004:
>
>You [Mark Heyman] need to break the log-jam of social-marxist and
>politically-correct dogmatism that is clogging up your ability to reason
>and to think logically verses emotionally.
>
>
>Ant McWatt comments:
>
>“Social-Marxist.” Interesting terminology…
>
>This rather unique combination of “social” and “Marxist” (rarely found in
>academic texts) could be shortened to another political term: possibly
>“socialist”? Now there was a famous dictator in the 1930s who led a
>socialist party in Germany called the Nazi party. So, as far as
>cosmotheism is concerned, thanks but no thanks. Platt Holden had it quite
>right on June 17th when he stated that cosmotheism ‘can only be described
>as a cult’. And, given the historical precedents, quite a dangerous one
>at that.
>
>
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