[MD] Barbarians & Hippies

[Platt Holden]

> [Arlo]
> Since "hippie" as I said is simply slang for following DQ, who can
> answer this question? The best I can do is, again, offer the following
> on "contrarians" by Pirsig.
> 
> "Once you see it in another culture like that and then come back to our
> own you can see that in an unofficial way we have our contrarian
> societies too. The "Bohemians" of the Victorian era were contrarians.
> So, to some extent, were the Hippies of the sixties. ...
> 
> But sometimes it's Dynamic, where your whole being senses that the
> static situation is an enemy of life itself. That's what drives the
> really creative people-the artists, composers, revolutionaries and the
> like-the feeling that if they don't break out of this jailhouse somebody
> has built around them, they're going to die.
> 
> But they're not being contrary in a way that is just decadent. They're
> way too energetic and aggressive to be decadent. They're fighting for
> some kind of Dynamic freedom from the static patterns. But the Dynamic
> freedom they're fighting for is a kind of morality too. And it's a
> highly important part of the overall moral process. It's often confused
> with degeneracy but it's actually a form of moral regeneration. Without
> its continual refreshment static patterns would simply die of old age."

If that's your idea of a "hippie" -- one who follows DQ -- count me in. 
Beauty and liberty have always been my lodestars. 

> [Platt]
> Would it entail living in communes, having group sex and adopting the
> drug culture of its predecessor? Would its followers forego bathing,
> wear rags and grow beards? Would its political statements consist of
> rioting, destroying property and defying the "pigs." Would the women
> parade around in T-shirts and no bras saying "Make love not war?"
> 
> [Arlo]
> Again with the "group sex" thing. Platt, Platt, Platt.... what is that,
> some kind of envy at being excluded from the fun?

You call group sex fun? Well, at least we know where your proclivities 
lie.
 
> Again. Pirsig. "The Hippie rejection of social and intellectual patterns
> left just two directions to go: toward biological quality and toward
> Dynamic Quality. The revolutionaries of the sixties thought that since
> both are anti-social, and since both are anti-intellectual, why then
> they must both be the same. That was the mistake."
> 
> Whatever the movement, it is away from social and intellectual patterns,
> towards DQ. I would guess those who cling vehemently to social patterns
> would find this frightening, even to the point of ridicule. Just like
> the priests likely ridiculed the Brujo, and the Victorians ridiculed the
> Bohemians.

Many Bohemians were rightfully ridiculed. Just because you are some 
kind of weirdo oddball doesn't mean you are some kind of revolutionary 
genius. 

> But, whatever, your description certainly sounds more vibrant that
> uptight, sexually repressed men in ties and women in ankle lengths
> dresses and corsets, concerned with appearance over substance, patting
> their virtuous backs and parading saying "make war not love". Eh?

Neither does being more "vibrant" indicate virtue.

> I mean, that IS the right-wing slogan, is it not? Can't show a couple
> "making love" on television, but you can show all the bombs dropping,
> bodies flying apart, killing and violence as you want. There was a Mel
> Gibson movie on a few weeks back, I think it was the first of those ones
> with Danny Glover. At any rate, they showed all the shooting, blood,
> guns flying, bodies dropping, etc. But the one second scene where a girl
> comes out of the shower with her GASP nipple showing, they edited out.

So you favor porno on PBS? Why am I not surprised? You seem to be 
fixated on sex.
 
> [Platt]
> I mean, could you give us some idea of what we might expect from turning
> the clock back to the 60's to abstract what was right?
> 
> [Arlo]
> Pirsig said that the hippie movement was "moral". It lost its way when
> it confused bq and DQ. But since its origins were "moral" (in its
> movement away from social and intellectual patterns), I would think that
> would be a good starting pointing for looking at the way forward. Pirsig
> had said, "The end of the twentieth century in America seems to be an
> intellectual, social, and economic rust-belt, a whole society that has
> given up on Dynamic improvement and is slowly trying to slip back to
> Victorianism, the last static ratchet-latch."
> 
> You are interested in furthering the slip back to Victorianism, I am
> interested in how we can get back towards Dynamic improvement.
> 
> Also, "Of these periods, the last two seem the most misunderstood. The
> Hippies have been interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the
> period following their departure as a "return to values," whatever that
> means. The Metaphysics of Quality, however, says that's backward: the
> Hippie revolution was the moral movement. The present period is the
> collapse of values. ... The Hippie revolution of the eighties was a
> moral revolution against both society and intellectuality.
> 
> Don't get it backwards, Platt. Embrace your inner 
> hippie/bohemian/brujo/contrarian. It has to be in their somewhere...
> even it's not getting any "group sex".

Why are we seeing today a collapse of values? Because of such 
"intellectual" developments as relativism, diversity, multiculturism 
and "sensitivity" wherein equality and feelings are worshipped above 
all with the consequent total inability of he intellectual community to 
"come forth with a single moral principle that distinguishes a Galileo 
fitting social repression from a common criminal fighting social 
repression. It has, as a result, been the champion of both. That's the 
root of the problem." (Lila, 24)

So the answer is not as you suggest to "embrace your inner hippie" but 
to ask of every decision, such as the resignation under pressure of 
Larry Summers of Harvard, "Why is this good?  Of if not, why not?" 
Until we can give reasons for why some actions are good and others are 
not, i.e., until we can specify a moral code that is based on reason, 
not just emotions or authority from on high, there will be no 
evolutionary progress. The obvious place to start if you believe in the 
MOQ is with the DQ premise that "its only perceived good is freedom" 
Unfortunately, there are too many self-appointed intellectuals who 
think they know they way forward and are only too willing to force 
others to take their path. That way leads to disaster as the history of 
the 20th century proved only too well. 

Platt