[MD] Transhumanism

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Mary,

I believe you are sincere, and have my best interests at 
heart, just as I do when I say you're unwittingly playing for 
the wrong team (Platonists of the past, rather than the 
Pirsigians of the future), but we certainly have widely 
divergent views on this issue.

Mary said:
Humility is the central concept of the MoQ.

Matt:
Nah.  I demur.

Mary said:
"Personal" humility is BS.  Anyone can learn to spout it 
automatically without truly believing a word of it.  At times, 
it is actually the expected thing to do, but I believe Pirsig 
sees the bigger picture.  He really DOES think his ideas 
should be a starting point rather than an end.  So did 
Buddha.

Matt:
The above is why I demur.  The bigger picture, I believe, is 
that believing in philosophical theses _will not_, in the end, 
change the world as Pirsig hopes.  If you are right about 
what Pirsig thinks is the big picture (which I wobble on 
assenting to), then I think Pirsig gets the big picture wrong.  
To your assertion, I reply, personal humility is absolutely 
_not_ bullshit and that thinking it is allows people to think 
that if a person doesn't agree with me about X or Y 
philosophical thesis (like using Pirsig's MoQ when expositing 
their own philosophy), then they can be treated with 
contempt.  You say people can learn to spout humility, and 
I say they can learn to spout a sentence (i.e., a thesis) 
much easier than faking a personality trait like humility, 
though both can be done.  I agree that Pirsig views his 
ideas as a starting point, as did the Buddha, as did Plato, 
as did James, as did Rorty, as do I.  But I don't see the 
connection between starting points and making humility 
central to one's philosophical system.

Mary said:
These ambiguous feelings are detrimental to your personal 
growth.  That is your choice.  For myself I choose to fight 
my own ego.  There is NO OTHER THING TO DO and I am 
not ashamed to admit it.  Are you?

Matt:
You think that because I don't assent to a specific 
philosophical thesis (humility as central to the MoQ), then 
I'm being held back.  I am determinedly unambiguous in 
thinking that it is a mistake to hold that thesis, though 
wobbly as to whether Pirsig does.  Which makes your 
indictment, I take it, to be worse.

I'm sure my intuitions about how the world works are what 
holds back my personal growth, but the struggle of life isn't 
dropping _all_ of these intuitions (which is the sneer Pirsig 
let loose when he walked out of Benares in ZMM), but 
figuring out which intuitions are the one's holding you back 
and which ones are to be kept.  You're blurring together in 
an unhelpful way the "ego" of "egotistical" and the Latin 
"ego" for "self."  There are connections, but I think you 
state well how we should _not_ see them.  I fight my 
immense ego to achieve a sense of humbleness before 
talking to others so that I might inhabit what they are 
saying long enough to see if what they think might be 
better than what I think.  But that's different than the 
philosophical view that "there is no self."

Mary said:
I truly apologize for hitting you over the head with this, but 
as I see it, this is the crux of the difference between your 
interpretation and DMBs, some others, and mine.

Matt:
No, no--stating explicitly these things without being snide 
about it is a step forward in my book.  My problem is 
philosophical: I think it is your viewpoint that leads to 
anti-humbleness in personal interactions.  It's hard to 
explicate, but my suspicion is that when you turn personal 
humility into a philosophical program, you're just 
reduplicating Platonism, which produces the idea that I'd 
rather be right than a decent person.  Because placing 
humility as a central philosophical thesis, you are demanding 
others to assent to it, that this is the right thing to think.  
It is _the_ central mistake of ZMM: placing dialectic ahead 
of rhetoric.  If one places rhetoric ahead of dialectic, then 
one places decency (i.e. the "rhetorical persona" that 
makes up one's personality) ahead of being right (i.e. 
asserting as true the right collection of sentences, like 
"rhetoric before dialectic").  Placing rhetoric before dialectic, 
decency before righteousness, is what produces the feeling 
of vulgar relativism from recalcitrant Platonists.  Marsha's 
right about relativism insofar as it means I'd rather be a 
decent person than right and an asshole.  Because in the 
long run, my money's on decency to _produce_ the "right 
sentences"--as Rorty liked to put it, "take care of freedom 
and truth will take care of itself."

Matt
 		 	   		  
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