[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[Platt Holden]

> [Arlo in predictable fashion]
> Conservatives don't like walking and biking? How odd. I know many who
> do. Maybe down your way conservatives don't do this, but up here they
> certainly do. Some of my more avid fisher/hiker friends are
> conservatives, and they express as much concern for the quality of the
> environment as I do, if not more.

Having a few so-called conservative friends who agree with you proves 
nothing. I have many liberal friends who believe that fears of  
environmental disaster are complete bull. Your words remind me of 
someone trying to defend her racist bias by saying, "Some of my best 
friends are black."

> As for the gardener-miner metaphors, I strictly placed that within a
> fundamentalist-other Christian tradition frame. I know many Christians
> who are both conservatives and approach the world through the metaphor
> of gardener. But the fundamentalist streak, which is aligned mostly with
> the right, certainly view their existence in the world as a miner.

The "fundamentalist streak" pales in comparison to your zeal in 
discrediting their beliefs.

> Let me remind you that Pirsig, too, saw this metaphor (mining) as more
> prevalent in overall western traditions. One could say that the western
> metaphorical approach has been "miner", while the non-western traditions
> (Buddhism, Indian) have been "gardener". Of the west and its S/O ways,
> Pirsig writes...
> 
> "Phædrus remembered a line from Thoreau: "You never gain something but
> that you lose something." And now he began to see for the first time the
> unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand
> and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built
> empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature
> into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth...but
> for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude:
> an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an
> enemy of it."

I read the passage three times and failed to detect one mention of 
mines or mining. You have a bizzare  way of reading into Pirsig's work 
what you want to find there. 

> Oddly, it is only your unwavering and unquestioning obedience to
> whatever the Party Line is that forces the dialogue into this schism.
> Conservatives are not anti-environmentalists. Most I know are avid
> outdoorsmen. But the zeal with which "all things liberal" must be
> attacked and condemned forces Party Jesters to ignore everything in
> favor of creating and waging their assinine "war". Because YOU have
> learned in good puppet fashion that even the slightest mention of
> "environment" or "conservation" must be evil, liberal talk, all you can
> offer yet again are more insipid and foolish caricatures rather than
> anything useful. Win the war at all costs. Whatever.

Glad you admit that the caricuture of conservatives you set up is 
"insipid" and "foolish."