[MD] grmbl

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
What "war?" Against tyranny? You betcha. Einstein understood he 
better get his butt out of Germany and that the U.S. was the best 
country to go to.

[Arlo]
Both Einstein and Pirsig are above the ridiculous war that puts the 
"individual" at war with the "collective".

"Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social 
being." (Einstein)

"The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence 
upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a 
positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather 
as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. 
Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives 
of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social 
drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate." (Einstein)

You need to find a way to rise above the talk-radio rhetoric you 
parrot, and maybe, just maybe, you'll understand the heights from 
which Einstein spoke.

[Platt]
So Pirsig changes the meaning of "intellectual" depending on what you 
wish it to mean? I don't think so.

[Arlo]
Nice try, but not at all.

"A scientific, intellectual culture had become a culture of millions 
of isolated people living and dying in little cells of psychic 
solitary confinement ..."

He is speaking of Western Culture, whose "intellectual culture" was 
based on SOM.

[Platt]
Are you kidding? SOM doesn't underpin the capitalist system.

[Arlo]
You should read ZMM.

Moreso, "capitalism" is a system of thinking based on SOM, just like 
"socialism" and other "ism" in the West. Some, like Pirsig and 
Einstein, are prescient enough to see this and to criticize it as needed.

[Platt]
Pirsig is also makes it clear that socialism is the darling of intellectuals.

[Arlo]
Yeah, those derned interlictials. Smart people suck.