From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Tue Jun 22 2004 - 04:30:54 BST
Hi Platt and all,
David Buchanan offered a series of points for discussion. Neither
Platt nor the overt racist bothered to address any of them. The
methods of discussion of both Platt and the overt racist is to simply
IGNORE all points proven in previous posts, and to either restate
their unsupported opinions, or to quote Pirsig incompletely and out
of context, even though such quotations have REPEATEDLY been shown to
be insufficient to make their point. So...
Below are several of dmb's points, which I offer again for
discussion, argument, refutation.
dmb said:
Racism isn't the only thing Holden and [the overt racist] have in
common. They are also both fond of quoting Pirsig's "germ" passages
to justify their murderous hatred.
They both think everything left of center is Marxist.
They both think Pirsig is compatible with their fasicst views.
Bogus science is used to muddy the waters on issues like global
warming and biological evolution, for example. The right-wingers have
hatched think tanks and media outlets that are equally psuedo-
intellectual.
Conversatives tend to hate the eggheads and the elitists, as they
like to call them, but they also want the respectability and status
that comes from scientific and intellectual credibility. They sense
that its a good thing that people should have, but they don't really
know what it is.
Rush Limbaugh doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same
sentence with Noam Chomsky.
This is what Pirsig was talking about when he said social values can
be intellectually defended. But it is the social values that are
being defended and the style or manner hardly matters - except when
it serves to hide, disguise and obscure the substance of the
assertion, as is almost always the case with the pseudointellectual
nonsense asserted by Platt and PV. These guys clearly don't know
their crackpots from a hole in the ground...
S.J. Gould:
"'The Bell Curve' ..presents no compelling data to support its
anachronistic social Darwinism, so I can only conclude that its
success in winning attention must reflect the depressing temper of
our time -- a historical moment of unprecedented ungenerosity, when a
mood for slashing social programs can be power-fully abetted by an
argument that beneficiaries cannot be helped, owing to inborn
cognitive limits expressed as low I.Q. scores."
dmb continues:
"Unprecedented ungenerosity" is a very generous way to put it. And it
has become even worse since he wrote it. I believe Platt and Paul and
their sympathizers are quite sincere and simply do not understand
that they are on the wrong side in a larger metaphysical battle, one
depicted quite well in Lila.
Platt does not even see that his views are a kissin cousin of the
freak show called Cosmotheism.
And [the overt racist] thinks he is not a racist. He re-defines the
word in a racist way that allows him to escape the charge and hate
the jews at the same time. I would hope that the irrationality, if
not absurdity, of such a move is obvious to all reasonable creatures.
But more importantly, I hope that these guys serve to demonstrate
what social level values look like as they are exhibited in
particular individuals.
Pirsig in LILA:
"The gigantic power of socialism and fascism, which have overwhelmed
this century, is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This
conflict explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane
search for power but as an all-consuming glorification of social
authority and hatred of intellectualism."
Ken Wilber in his INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY:
"Auschwitz is the result of the many products of rationality being
used in irrational ways. Auschwitz is rationality hijacked by
tribalism, by an ethnocentric mythology of blood and soil and race,
rooted in the land, romantic in its dispositions, barbaric in its
ethnic cleansing. You cannot seriously attempt genocide with a bow
and arrow; but you can attempt it with steel and coal, combustion
engines and gas chambers, machine guns and atomic bombs. These are
not rational desires by any definition of rational; these are
ethnocentric tribalism commandeering the tools of an advanced
consciousness and using them presicely for the lowest of the lowest
motives. Auschwitz is the endgame, not of reason, but of tribalim."
dmb says:
Is uncritical patriotism so very different from the "glorification of
social authority".
Is racism so very different from an "ethnocentric mythology"? I'm not
saying that Platt is building gas chambers. The differences are many.
But the similarities revolve around the desire to assert social level
values and/or attack intellectual level values.
This basic distinction is what puts fascism and its cousins on the
right on the wrong side of the evolutionary struggle. So, when guys
like Platt and [the overt racist] imagine that Pirsig supports their
value system, they couldn't be more mistaken. They love a book in
which they are depicted as the enemy of intellect and evolution
itself. [msh adds: How's that for irony?]
...when a social level value system encounters intellectual level
values, they are seen as "germs". This explains both Hitler's anti-
intellectualism and Platt's hatred of Chomsky and Zinn in favor of
Rush, the Bell Curvers and the rest of his crypto-fascist mentors.
This explains why [the overt facist] views legitimate science as a
political enemy.
msh adds:
Well, Platt and OR, take your pick. As usual, all thoughtful, well-
reasoned, evidence-supported argument and commentary will be greatly
appreciated.
Best to all,
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
-- InfoPro Consulting - The Professional Information Processors Custom Software Solutions for Windows, PDAs, and the Web Since 1983 Web Site: http://www.infoproconsulting.com "Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything." -- Henri Poincare' MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archives: Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
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