[MD] On Indian Values (Part I?)

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt to Scott]
However, the influence of the Iroquois Confederacy on the formation of the 
American republic continues to be debatable among historians.

[Arlo]
Maybe so. But its intriguing to me that all the opponents mentioned in your 
article are staunch conservatives. From Will to Bjork, D'Souza and Pat 
Buchanan. One wonders then if there is "conspiracy" to advance the notion, 
or "conspiracy" to deny it. Given your unwavering Party Support, I'd say 
you see these people are honest, free thinking scholars, and anyone who 
advances the IC as an evil, lying, leftist Marxist. Maybe the truth lies in 
between.

[Platt to Scott]
Any relation of Pirsig's ideas about Indians to current political debates, 
like comparing Indian temperate behavior to liberals and white men's 
rapacious conduct to conservatives, is ludicrous.

[Arlo]
Which only shows you either don't read what I write, or in your eagerness 
to warp everything into your dichotomy you neglect even the most evident text.

I said, "Indeed, I could go line-by-line through Lila (as I started to do) 
and make the case that with little change the Victorian-Indian conflict 
parallels nearly verbatim the Conservative-Liberal conflict "as the Party 
Jesters present it". (Note this last emphasis. This is why I find their 
dichotomy illusionary and distortive. But you'll hear more on this later.)

See. Note that part again. "As the Party Jesters present it". It is you, in 
your ongoing inane dichotomy that parallels the Victorian-Indian conflict 
very neatly. It is the conflict that Pirsig wrote about, within the 
American psyche, between European and Indian values, between "freedom and 
order", that is an American cultural crisis. It is this conflict, that YOU, 
in your absolute devotion to Party Orthodoxy, represent in your warped and 
distorted way, as paralleling this conflict.

You had said, "Indian values not suited for modern life", and yet have not 
answered which of these that Pirsig talked about you find "unfitted". Among 
all that I could find described by Pirsig as "Indian values", the only 
possible ones that could be part of your statement are "punctuality, 
attention to detail, and subordination to authority". Pirsig did, of 
course, say the Indian did not hold these three values, and was so unsuited 
for complex, technological life. Fair enough.

The only other "value" Pirsig mentions is "social equality" contrasted with 
Victorian "social superiority". So, I added that to your list. Giving us 
this....

Of the Indian values unsuited for modern life, there are non-punctuality, 
inattention to detail, refusal to subordinate to authority and social equality.

If I've missed something in Pirsig, if you can find some "Indian value" 
that I missed, that was part of your dismissal of Indian values as 
"unfitted", please, please, please let me know.

Barbarism was not a sole trait of the Indians, biological savagery was the 
nature of MAN (according to Pirsig), and the Europeans evidence as much 
villainy as the Indians they so despised.

As for your otherwise dismissal of 98% of what Pirsig expounded upon at 
length about the Indian, I'll lump this with ZMM, the peyote experience and 
all the other HUGE segments of Pirsig you ignore in favor of one or two 
small soundbites. And for you to accuse me of ignoring 1% of what Pirsig 
wrote, when you ignore more than half, continues to be quite amusing.

Arlo