[MD] Unreality of Equality

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt]
It seems clear that Pirsig regards "criminal types" of less value as 
people than intellectuals like Galileo, or in modern terms, Einstein 
and others of accomplishment. He mocks the idea that everyone has equal 
value morally. I agree. Do you?

[Arlo]
First off, I think you are grossly misrepresenting Pirsig. Remember that that
criminal has equal moral value (once the biological threat to society is
contained). "What makes killing him immoral is that a criminal is not just a
biological organism. He is not even just a defective unit of society. Whenever
you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too. A human being
is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral precedence over a
society."

So although the criminal is a threat, he retains the same moral value in his
existence as you or me. He may have "low social quality", to be sure, but you
are not morally more valuable than he. Indeed, the danger in proclaiming moral
supremity is that often the truly valuable do not appear so in their lifetime.
"It's not the "nice" guys who bring about real social change. "Nice" guys look
nice because they're conforming. It's the "bad" guys, who only look nice a
hundred years later, that are the real Dynamic force in social evolution."

So that someone may possess great social standing seems a poor way (to me) to
bestow "value". The Brujo, remember, had NO social quality. He was a poor
vagrant. And yet it was he who brought about the Dynamic changes necessary for
his tribe to evolve.

In Pirsig's writing, if we can deduce it at all, the people with "moral
superiority" over others were the "contrarians". "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."

But, at the core of it all, is the DQ-enabledness of man that creates and
sustains his true "value", and this "value" is no greater in you than it is me.
We may live up to different realizations of this potential, but it is the
potential from which value derives, not social wealth, or social success, or
even Intellectual ability. History may retroactively label the "contrarians" as
the "more valuable", but that is not something that we can do.

Arlo