From: John Scull (jscull@island.net)
Date: Wed Jul 14 2004 - 18:16:48 BST
I have been lurking and following this thread for a while. It seems to mostly
be a re-hash of political and economic arguments I have been hearing all my
life. I have been unable to see what it has to do with the MOQ. In contrast, I
recently found a short book at the public library that seems to be a good fit
with Pirsig's ideas, "The Good Society: The Humane Agenda" by John Kenneth
Galbraith, 1996.
In the MOQ as I understand it, Galbraith seems to see economics as being on the
social level with DQ coming from technology, climate change, population growth,
and other historical factors. He would see the Quality intellectual response to
these changes to be creative thinking and problem-solving, intellectual DQ, not
the intellectual SQ of political dogma. Here are some excerpts from the
beginning of the book:
[begin quote]
"On the one hand, there were the liberals, as they were called in the United
States, the socialists and social democrats, as elsewhere they were named; on
the other, asserting or accepting the business interest, the
conservatives...Always present, however, was the basic, the ultimate, dichotomy:
capital versus labor.
Now it can be assumed no longer. The old dichotomy survives in the public
psyche -- the residue of its long and ardent history. But in the modern economy
and polity the division is very different, and this is so in all the
economically advanced countries. On one side, there are now the rich, the
comfortably endowed and those so aspiring, and on the other the economically
less fortunate and the poor, along with the considerable number who, out of
social concern or sympathy, seek to speak for them or for a more compassionate
world. This is the economic and political alignment today.
...
It is the pride of liberals and the political conviction of conservatives that
they shape the social agenda; in fact, it is shaped by the deeper trends of
history. To these there must be accommodation, and liberals, social democrats
and those called socialists in the advanced countries have traditionally made or
guided this accommodation. In consequence, to them has been attributed the
larger change; some, indeed many, have taken credit therefor, and conservatives
have all but universally awarded them responsibility and blame. But, in
reality, it is history that is in control.
...
Here then is the error: in the common view of both liberals and conservatives in
the United States, it is the liberals who have made government a large,
intrusive force. Both groups wish to believe that it is political decision and
action that are controlling. And from this comes the prime conservative notion
that social and economic policy can be reversed.
...
In the modern economic and political system ideological identification
represents an escape from unwelcome thought -- the substitution of broad and
banal formula for specific decision in the particular case.
...
As a broad rule, privatization ranks with comprehensive socialism in
irrelevance. There is a large area of economic activity in which the market is
and should be unchallenged; equally, there is a large range of activities that
increases with increasing economic well-being where the services and functions
of the state are either necessary or socially superior. Privatization,
therefore, is not any better as a controlling guide to public action than is
socialism. In both cases the primary service of the doctrine is in providing
escape from thought. In the good society there is in these matters one dominant
rule: decision must be made on the social and economic merits of the particular
case. This is not the age of doctrine; it is the age of practical judgment."
[end quote]
The rest of the book is a discussion of specific issues -- social justice,
inflation, deficits, regulation, environment, migration, education, healt,
militarization, foreign policy, international development. I agree with some of
Galbraith's ideas, disagree with others, but I found them all to be provocative
and refreshingly free of cant. Recommended.
John
===============================
John Scull
http://www.island.net/~jscull
http://www.ecopsychology.org
"When you understand, you cannot help but love"
Thich Nhat Hanh
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