[MD] Reason, Tradition

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt to Mike and Matt, on Mill]
I like this distinction between social morality and personal morality,  also
known as "character." The personal morality attributes of hard work, personal
responsibility, self-discipline, individual initiative,  craftsmanship,
commitment to excellence, thrift, delayed gratification,  honor of achievement,
optimism, life long pursuit of knowledge and the like seem today to lack the
moral weight afforded to the social morality of...

[Arlo]
Whoa, cowboy! Let me chime in here with agreement. Don't forget Pirsig's
"gumption", eh?

[Platt continues]
... diversity, affirmative action, feminism, multiculturism, environmentalism,
political correctness and the like -- to the long term detriment of a free
society.

[Arlo]
Ohhhh.... now its just neocon propaganda. See, you had a good start, and then
turned it into nothing but a right-wing political campaign. Why is, for
example, "environmentalism" outside "personal responsibility" or "commitment to
excellence"? Aren't clean water and clear air, preserved state and federal
lands, emissions and pollution control, all positive goals to work for?
Especially since you added "delayed gratification" to your list. Seems to me
destruction of public and natural resources runs akin to the notion of delayed
gratification, and says that destroying a forest to make immediate profit is
better than preserving forest lands for future generations to hunt, hike,
picnic and sail. 

And "diversity"... hehehe... let's kick out everyone who's not just like Platt,
eh? Oh wait.. riiiiiiiight, you just read "White Guilt", the new canon of
neocon propaganda. I should've seen this coming. I remember the Bell Curve days
on the list. Please tell me we don't have to sit through dribble like that
again? Please??

Let's go back to arete, much more enjoyable. Pirsig says, "Areté implies a
respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of
specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency...or rather a much higher
idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life
but in life itself."

This is immediately followed, to highlight the difference between THIS
understanding of arete, and what we have today...

"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."

All those things you mention in the beginning of your post, all things that
should be honed in on arete, oneness of life, being part of the world. When
those qualities you mention at the start are guided by an understand that
"excellence" is THIS... arete, and not wealth, power and control of the world,
then we are getting somewhere.

Arlo