[MD] Do genes experience?

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Larz] 
Platt will be back soon enough.  You can wait until then to vent your hostility.

[Arlo]
Hostility? Nah, life's too short. Call it frustration at the dumbing down of the
dialogue in favor of blind allegience to the state and party ideology. These
nonsensical attacks on the "academy" are just part and parcel. Pirsig wrote
about such misguided criticisms in his Church of Reason lecture. Looks like
we've come full circle, as they say, and are right back to where we stared.

"After these explanations he returned to the analogy of the religious church.
The citizens who build such a church and pay for it probably have in mind that
they’re doing this for the community. A good sermon can put the parishioners in
a right frame of mind for the coming week. Sunday school will help the children
grow up right. The minister who delivers the sermon and directs the Sunday
school understands these goals and normally goes along with them, but he also
knows that his primary goals are not to serve the community. His primary goal
is always to serve God. Normally there’s no conflict but occasionally one
creeps in when trustees oppose the minister’s sermons and threaten reduction of
funds. That happens.

A true minister, in such situations, must act as though he’d never heard the
threats. His primary goal isn’t to serve the members of the community, but
always God.

The primary goal of the Church of Reason, Phædrus said, is always Socrates’ old
goal of truth, in its ever-changing forms, as it’s revealed by the process of
rationality. Everything else is subordinate to that. Normally this goal is in
no conflict with the location goal of improving the citizenry, but on occasion
some conflict arises, as in the case of Socrates himself. It arises when
trustees and legislators who’ve contributed large amounts of time and money to
the location take points of view in opposition to the professors’ lectures or
public statements. They can then lean on the administration by threatening to
cut off funds if the professors don’t say what they want to hear. That happens
too.

True churchmen in such situations must act as though they had never heard these
threats. Their primary goal never is to serve the community ahead of everything
else. Their primary goal is to serve, through reason, the goal of truth."

Arlo