[MD] Bill's Intellectual Level

[Ant McWatt]

Ant McWatt commented June 27th:

Thinking of the desert island illustration that I gave to Dan recently, a 
person stranded on their own can’t be honourable.  It would be a useless 
concept because, like money or saying excuse me after sneezing, it needs at 
least two people (i.e. a society) to have any relevance.

Platt’s assertion that “Seems the author and I are on the same page” in 
regards to the intellectual level only appears correct if the section he 
quotes is not read in its full context.  When the sentence Platt refers to 
is read in its proper context, it can be seen that the “author” (Phaedrus) 
is not agreeing with Rigel but actually questioning the latter’s high regard 
for honour i.e. as I noted in my post of June 21st, the “author” states:

“There’s always been something wrong, logically,” the author went on.  “How
can an act of love, that does no injury to anyone, be so evil?...  I mean 
was it Lila who was to blame for your friend’s misfortune or was it his wife 
and his so-called friends and his superiors at the bank?  Who really did him 
in?”

[Plattman to Ant, June 28th]
Scout oath: “On my honor, I will do my best”-- a pledge to one’s self.
On a desert island, the survivor must honor (respect) the environment  that
supports him.

[Jarloker to Plattman, June 28th]
Now “honor” is “respect”. I thought it was “truth”? I’m still waiting for 
one
example of someone behaving “honorably” that does not entail a “duty to 
others
over self”.

[Ant comments]

That makes two of us.  This social “duty to others” definition of “honour” 
is confirmed by my dictionary which defines “honour” as “fame or glory” (a 
Victorian social value!), “high or noble rank” (Victorians again!), “to show 
courteous behaviour towards” (Victorian!), “to keep one’s promise to 
another” (social value).   A scout’s oath is an example of the latter 
definition where a particular scout promises to do his best to his troop and 
his country.   No surprize either to hear that the scout movement was 
created in the Edwardian era by a Victorian.

At the end of Chapter 7 of LILA Pirsig reminds us where the social 
orientated morality of the Victorians, Rigel, the neo-cons and Platt (a 
supporter of the Iraqi occupation) lead us:

“It was a ‘quality’ of manners and egotism and suppression of human decency 
[e.g. the Arkansas Project].  When Victorians were being moral, kindness 
wasn’t anywhere in sight.  They approved whatever was socially fashionable 
and suppressed or ignored anything that was not.  The period ended when, 
after having defined for all time what ‘Truth’ and ‘Virtue’ and ‘Quality’ 
are, the Victorians and their Edwardian successors sent an entire generation 
of children into the trenches of World War I on behalf of these ideals.  And 
murdered them.  For nothing.  That war was the natural consequence of 
Victorian moral egotism.  When it was over the children who survived never 
got tired of laughing at Charlie Chaplin comedies of those elderly people 
with the silk hats and too many clothes and noses up in the air.  Young 
people of the twenties read Hemingway, Dos Passos and Fitzgerald, drank 
bootleg gin, danced tangos into the night, drove fast roadsters, made 
illicit love, called themselves a ‘lost generation,’ and never wanted 
anything to remind them of Victorian morality again.”

“Ornamental cast iron.  If you hit it with a sledge-hammer it doesn’t bend.  
It just shatters into ugly, coarse fragments.  The intellectual social 
reforms of this century just shattered those Victorians.  All that’s left of 
them now is ugly fragments of their ornamental cast-iron way of life turning 
up at odd places, such as these mansions, Platt’s posts and in Rigel’s talk 
this morning.”

[Plattman to Ant]

“Proper” context is a judgment call.

[Ant comments]

Some “judgment calls” have higher quality than others.

[Plattman repeats the same line out-of-context to Ant]

After Rigel describes the troubles Jim suffered because of his affair with 
Lila, “‘That’s really bad,’ the author said, and looked down at the table.”

[Jarloker then puts the line back into its context]

Anyone who read the text can see that [Phaedrus is] talking about Jim’s 
friends
abandoning him. The very next words by Phaedrus in the dialogue are...

“Who was to blame?” he said.

“What do you mean?” Richard Rigel asked.

“I mean was it Lila who was to blame for your friend’s misfortune or was it 
his
wife and his so-called friends and his superiors at the bank? Who really did
him in?”

“I don’t follow,” Richard Rigel said.

“Was it her love or was it their hatred?”

It’s rather obvious that the “badness” Phaedrus is referring to is “their
hatred”. No where else in the dialogue is there any support to the notion 
that
he is referring to Jim’s actions, but immediately afterwards he speaks as
provided.

[Ant comments]

Exactly.  Platt is on the “same page” as the socially driven Rigel (together 
with the neo-cons, the Fundamentalist Muslims and the Victorians); certainly 
_not_ the intellectual “author” in LILA (Phaedrus).  The twisting of context 
by Platt with this particular section of Chapter 6 is a perversion of the 
MOQ; no doubt driven by the need to “rehabilitate” social values (such as 
honour) as “intellectual” ones.  However, such a corruption of the MOQ (by 
defining social values as intellectual values) is immoral and doesn’t wash 
with this doctor of philosophy.

And talking of immorality, note the following from the “Power of Nightmares” 
transcript where David Brock (the journalist at the centre of the Arkansas 
Project which was the neo-con campaign set-up to discredit Clinton) admits 
that the attacks on Clinton went too far, and, in fact, corrupted 
conservative politics:

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Was Whitewater true?
BROCK : No! I mean, there was no criminal wrongdoing in Whitewater. 
Absolutely not. It was a land deal that the Clintons lost money on. It was a 
complete inversion of what happened.
INTERVIEWER : Was Vince Foster killed [by the Clintons]?
BROCK : No. He killed himself.
INTERVIEWER : Did the Clintons smuggle drugs?
BROCK : Absolutely not.
INTERVIEWER : Did those promoting these stories [i.e. those politicians and 
journalists that Platt puts on a pedestal] know that this was not true, that 
none of these stories were true?
BROCK : They did not care.
INTERVIEWER : Why not?
BROCK : Because they were having a devastating effect. So why stop? It was 
terrorism. Political terrorism [but, no doubt, that’s OK with Platt because 
it was conservatives doing it].
INTERVIEWER : But you were one of the agents.
BROCK : Absolutely. Absolutely.

http://www.daanspeak.com/TranscriptPowerOfNightmares2.html

(and also at: www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares )

As Joe Conason (the author of “The Hunting of the President”) observes after 
the above section:

“In the leadership of conservatism during the Clinton era, there was an 
element of corruption. There was an element of a willingness to do anything 
to achieve the goal of bringing Clinton down. There was a way in which the 
people who perceived Clinton as immoral behaved immorally themselves. They 
ended up behaving worse than the people who they were attacking.”

As with Rigel, the hypocrisy and immoral behaviour of the neo-cons make for 
disturbing viewing/reading.

[Plattman]

First, Clinton’s impeachment wasn’t a failure. He was impeached.

[Ant comments]

Platt, as an honourable person, I take it you will agree with me that the 
Arkansas Project was immoral, disturbing and shouldn’t have happened in a 
modern democracy.

[Plattman]

Second, during Clinton’s reign and subsequently the American public has 
indeed placed intellectual values over social ones by electing Republicans. 
:-)

[Jarloker]

Nay, the American public has placed fear and nightmare over everything else,
giving power to anyone promising to protect them from the dark demons of 
some
eternally shapeshifting bogeyman. Whether its terrorists under ever stone,
Mexicans swarming over the hills, commie liberals, multiculturalism, or 
“moral
relativism”. It is a pendulum, though. For every swing in one direction, it
takes a swing back. We are simply witnessing a backwards swing, a “return to
Victorianism”. As Pirsig says, “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.” Pretty much sums up American 
politics.

[Ant comments]

It’s a pity all those taxpayer resources are being wasted on largely 
imaginary fears while they could be going towards genuine problems such as 
poverty, healthcare, illiteracy, environmental damage, etc.  Moreover, Platt 
refuses to see that he’s part of the “Bush Bin-Laden” nightmare every time 
he uncritically forwards some Fox news propaganda straight onto this 
discussion group (though at least it saves having to look at the neo-con 
media to see what the latest “bogeyman” is).  Finally, I would have agreed 
with Matt K that the neo-cons and their media supporters are laughable and 
just need to be ignored except they’re not running a golf cart dealership 
(where they possibly belong) but a whole country.   That’s like putting 
Cartman in charge of South Park town council!

Best wishes,

Anthony.




.

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