[MD] freedom is for the rich

[Laird Bedore]

>> [Laird]
>> Chock one up to literalism. ;) (my cheap attempt at sarcastic humor. I 
>> heard sarcasm was the ante to get a hand at this table! hehe, okay, I'd 
>> better stop now.)
>>
>> To take your point:
>> A moral duty to help the poor - I'll break this down two ways depending 
>> on duty ('forced') and duty ('willing'):
>> 1a. Being willing to help the poor: social patterns helping other social 
>> patterns. Cool.
>> 1b. Being forced to help the poor:  social pattern A putting down social 
>> pattern B to help social pattern C. Conflict.
>> 2. The right of an individual to respond to DQ and act on his own 
>> judgement: DQ helping intellectual patterns. Cool.
>> 3. Forcibly taking a man's property in order to serve another's 
>> purposes: social pattern A putting down social pattern B to help social 
>> pattern C. Conflict, same as 1b.
>> 3a. Willingly giving your property in order to serve another's purposes: 
>> social patterns helping other social patterns. Cool.
>>
>> As you're alluding to in 1b and 3(original), social pattern B gets the 
>> short end of the deal, and there's contention going on here. You're 
>> trying to make a point of condition 2 being held down by condition 3, 
>> but I'm not seeing such an example here. Putting social pattern B above 
>> social pattern C before gauging their "values" is (understandably) 
>> causing friction in the discussion. When there's contention between two 
>> social patterns (B and C), the pragmatic MoQ approach is to aim for the 
>> greater total good, and that's what Arlo and others are trying to say.
>>     
> [Platt]
> The question is what is the "greater good" among patterns A, B and C? On what
> basis does one decide? Incidentally, Pirsig's view of a pragmatic approach 
> is less than flattering. See Chap. 29 of Lila.
>
>   
[Laird]
And that fine question is why we have disagreements, debates, majority 
votes, democracies, and courts - to mediate the varying levels of value 
we each assign to patterns A, B, and C. The more significant the 
disagreement, the further up the mediation ladder it goes. We expect a 
degree of reason and open-mindedness from the people debating and 
deciding these value-comparisons, and we often end up with a result that 
is better than the cause of the disagreement. Not always, mind you, but 
most of the time. Shit happens. Very pragmatic indeed.

On Pirsig and pragmatism (Lila, ch 29, pp 416,417), Pirsig is 
specifically taking aim at how James tried to popularize it by attaching 
'practicality' to it. The Nazi example isn't even about pragmatism - 
it's about understanding the role of social patterns of value. Pirsig 
attacks "satisfaction", and for a half-assed dazzle effect he quipped, 
"[the nazis] considered it to be practical" in order to quickly dismiss 
discussion of pragmatism and sweep it under the rug. He's just 
cliff-noting over pragmatism so he can get to radical empiricism, which 
is what really drew his interest. Don't read too much into his one-pager 
on pragmatism, Pirsig didn't either.

-Laird