[MD] Barbarians & Hippies

[Platt Holden]

> Platt asked March 6th:
> 
> Hippies are anti-government? How come most avowed hippies like you are
> socialists at heart?
> 
> Ant McWatt notes:
> 
> Platt,
> 
> Socialism is a very broad church.  If you are referring to the socialism
> of Robert Tressell (“The thinking cyclist”) then there might be an
> element of truth in your assertion.  However, that is a moot point
> because you haven’t read his celebrated novel “The Ragged Trousered
> Philanthropists”.  If you are referring to the ideology of the pre-1990
> soviet communist countries then you’d be well off base.  Moreover, on
> this discussion group, I’ve only ever said that my political viewpoint
> was one on the lines of the MOQ (i.e. a combination of the best of
> traditional systems such as socialism, capitalism etc).  Out of the
> traditional political factions my guess is that anarchy (in the sense of
> minimal government interference and maximum individual freedom) would be
> the closest to the MOQ.

In that case, the MOQ supports the Libertarian philosophy I subscribe 
to. :-)

> Platt stated March 6th:
> 
> No doubt hippies want to change the world, but what I'm trying to find
> out is specifically what hippies have in mind. The answers that have
> been given so far are amorphous sentiments like peace, freedom and
> openness.
> 
> Ant McWatt comments:
> 
> What do hippies have in mind?  I think hippies plan to turn the whole
> world into a garden of Eden where Brian Wilson will become a God and
> good vibrations in the form of free love, music festivals, psychedelics,
> permaculture and a dedicated philosophical life will be the norm for
> all.  Hemp (and its products) will become the primary driving force for
> technology (especially useful because once an artefact becomes
> out-of-date, it can be broken-up into small pieces and then smoked.  Now
> that’s what I call a high quality recycling scheme).
> 
> Seriously, if you’re talking about MOQ hippies, read ZMM and LILA.  If
> you’re talking about SOM hippies, may I recommend Skip Stone’s website
> hippy.com or his book “Hippies From A to Z”.
> 
> >“To be a hippie you must believe in peace as the way to resolve
> >differences among peoples, ideologies and religions. The way to peace
> >is through love and tolerance. Loving means accepting others as they
> >are, giving them freedom to express themselves and not judging them
> >based on appearances. This is the core of the hippie philosophy.”

Peace, love, tolerance, freedom -- all amorphous sentiments.

> Platt asked March 6th:
> 
> Ok, add to that amorphous soup "peace, love and tolerance." Peace at
> what price? Are hippies willing to give up their freedom for peace?
> 
> Ant McWatt comments:
> 
> I think if you travelled to the Middle East you would realise that
> people around the world are very much the same and, if given the chance,
> just want a fulfilling life where they can bring-up their children in a
> high quality peaceful environment.  98% of people I met there in 2002
> were pretty much down-to-earth and non-extreme; it was just the same
> with the people I met in New York or that I meet in Liverpool.  A label
> such as “Muslim” or “capitalist” or “socialist” seems extremely
> unimportant in a one-to-one environment.
> 
> I think if all reasonably minded people (who are by far the majority),
> realise their commonalities, work together to defeat the extremists (of
> whatever origin) then things will work out fine.  It’s all about
> organising in large pressure groups globally whether that’s via trade
> unions or organisations such as Greenpeace or CND.  And maybe even some
> Church organizations if that rings your bell.

Ah, at last a clue about the hippie agenda.

> >Above all, note the following:
> >
> >“The hippy movement erected signposts for all to see. Some warn us of
> >impending danger, others direct us towards richer, more fulfilling
> >lives, but most show us the road to freedom. Freedom is the paramount
> >virtue in this system. Freedom to do as one pleases, go where the flow
> >takes you, and to be open to new experiences. This engenders an
> >attitude that allows for maximum personal growth.”
> >
> >(http://hippy.com/hippyway.htm)
> 
> Platt commented March 6th:
> 
> Add to the amorphous soup, "go with the flow."
> 
> Ant McWatt comments:
> 
> I think Skip Stone’s terminology would be improved if he read LILA as
> he’s no doubt  talking about the MOQ’s code of Art in the above. 
> Actually, there’s a whole text written on this subject by Professor of
> psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, oddly enough titled “Flow”:
> 
> “If a tennis player is asked how it feels when a game is going well, she
> will describe a state of mind that is very similar to the description a
> chess player will give of a good tournament.  So will be a description
> of how it feels to be absorbed in painting, or playing a difficult piece
> of music.  Watching a good play or reading a stimulating book also seems
> to produce the same mental state.  I called it ‘flow,’ because this was
> a metaphor several respondents gave for how it felt when their
> experience was most enjoyable - it was like being carried away by a
> current, everything moving smoothly without effort
  We feel involved,
> concentrated, absorbed.  We know what must be done, and we get immediate
> feedback as to how well we are doing.  The tennis player knows after
> each shot whether the ball actually went where she wanted it to go; the
> pianist knows after each stroke of the keyboard whether the notes sound
> like they should
 We forget ourselves and become lost in the activity.”
> 
> “We feel a sense of transcendence, as if the boundaries of the self had
> been expanded.  The sailor feels at one with the wind, the boat, and the
> sea; the singer feels a mysterious sense of universal harmony.  In those
> moments the awareness of time disappears, and hours seem to flash by
> without our noticing
 Contrary to expectation, ‘flow’ usually happens
> not during relaxing moments of leisure and entertainment, but rather
> when we are actively involved in a difficult enterprise, in a task that
> stretches our mental and physical abilities. Any activity can do it.
> Working on a challenging job, riding the crest of a tremendous wave, and
> teaching one’s child the letters of the alphabet are the kinds of
> [Dynamic] experiences that focus our whole being in a harmonious rush of
> energy, and lift us out of the [static] anxieties and boredom that
> characterize so much of everyday life.  (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, Chapter
> 1)

The book holds a place of prominence in my library. But I think "go 
with the flow" in the 60's meant getting high on drugs.
 
> Platt stated March 5th:
> 
> So far the hippie philosophy is "peace, love, openness, freedom,
> tolerance and go with the flow."  A more amorphous soup of sentiments
> would be hard to find. Surprised you haven't included "Turn on, tune in,
> drop out."
> 
> Ant McWatt comments:
> 
> Well, Leary’s sentiments are probably a good start for any young person
> especially when translated into MOQ-speak i.e. “Turn on (to Dynamic
> Quality), tune in (to the ideas espoused in the MOQ such as freedom),
> drop out (of traditional static patterns such as SOM).

Good. But I would say a good start "ONLY when translated into MoQ-
speak."

> >To sum up then: Chapter 24 of LILA informs us that the MOQ builds on
> >the intellectual revolution of the 20th century and the hippy
> >philosophy of the 1960s but also sees where they went wrong (namely
> >their SOM assumptions) and how society has been adversely affected by
> >these assumptions.

It wasn't SOM assumptions that caused hippies to go wrong. It was 
hatred of both society and intellect, causing them to fall back to the 
biological level value of "If it feels good, do it.". 

> Platt misleadingly stated March 5th:
> 
> Nowhere in Chap. 24 or anywhere else does Pirsig spell out the hippie
> philosophy other than to say it was a moral movement gone bad.
> 
> Ant McWatt comments:

> “Just as the intellectual revolution undermined social patterns, the
> Hippies undermined both static and intellectual patterns. NOTHING BETTER
> HAS BEEN INTRODUCED TO REPLACE THEM.  The result has been a drop in both
> social and intellectual quality.”

You call that spelling out the hippie philosophy? It spells out why the 
movement failed. On second thought, I guess there's no difference. 

> Nothing better in this context means the dominating culture of the 1980s
> and after.  As the late subversive comedian Bill Hicks lamented in the
> early 1990s: “What's happened to us? After eight years of Ronald Reagan
> and yuppies, we live on like the third mall from the Sun now.”  (BTW,
> the audio clip that this quote is taken from can be heard at length over
> Dave Buchanan’s excellent paper “Fun with Blasphemy” at
> robertpirsig.org)

"Nothing better" is hardly a ringing endorsement of hippie philosophy 
whose main claim to fame was it undermined both social and intellectual 
values.

> Moreover, in Chapter 29 of LILA, Pirsig also mentions hippies positively
> in the context of contrarians who are concerned with Dynamic
> development.
> 
> “That brujo in Zuñi was a contrarian.  The Cheyenne had a whole society
> of contrarians to assimilate the phenomenon within their social fabric. 
> Cheyenne contrarians rode their horses sitting backward, entered teepees
> backward, and had a whole repertoire of things they performed in a
> contrary way.  Members seemed to enter the contrary society when they
> felt a great wrong, a great injustice, had been done to them and
> apparently it was felt that this was a way of resolving the injustice. 
> Once you see it in another culture like that and then come back to our
> own you can see that in an unofficial way we have our contrarian
> societies too.  The "Bohemians" of the Victorian era were contrarians. 
> So, to some extent, were the Hippies of the sixties.”  [Note the phrase
> there: “Hippies of the sixties” or am I hallucinating it?]

You conveniently left out the downside of of being a contrarian. 
"Sometimes it's degenerative negativism, where biological forces are 
driving it. Sometimes it's an ego pattern that says, 'I'm too important 
to be doing all this dumb static stuff.' Sometimes the contrary anti-
static drive becomes a static pattern of its own. This contrary stuff 
can become a tiger-ride where you can't get off and you have to keep 
riding and riding until the tiger finally throws you and devours you. 
The degenerative contrarian stuff usually goes that way. Drugs, illicit 
sex, alcohol and the like." (Lila, 29) The last sentence describes the 
behavior of many hippies.
 
> It therefore strikes me that there is more to the hippies (as understood
> by Pirsig) than just “a moral movement gone bad” as you falsely claimed
> he was saying. 

Falsely claim?  "In the early seventies, as people began to see this, 
they dropped away from the movement, and the Hippie revolution, like 
the intellectual revolution of the twenties, became a moral rebellion 
that failed." (Lila, 24) Since when is failure considered good?

> In fact, I seem to remember Pirsig saying that this
> “fighting for some kind of Dynamic freedom from the static patterns” is
> the highest morality there is.
> 
> Moreover, I think Pirsig tries to be very fair in dealing with cultures
> whether its Victorians, Native American Indians or Hippies (neither too
> sentimental or too dismissive) so your distorted reading of his work is
> an increasingly serious matter of concern. As Arlo explained yesterday:
> 
> “It’s the idiot reliance on ALL or NOTHING, the blind reliance on
> external patterns of party ideology to define ‘what is right’ and ‘what
> is good’ that leads to many of the problems we see today. I have yet to
> hear one thing from you since I've belonged to this forum that deviates
> from Limbaugh's words or the words of the right-wing apologists. You can
> try and try and try to deny this, but it is quite evident.”
> 
> I think it’s quite evident as well.  If not, where exactly do you
> disagree with Rush Limbaugh and why?

What sort of ideology do you and Arlo subscribe to that demands 
disagreement with Limbaugh or Bill Hicks or anybody else? Where is it 
written in the MOQ that to agree with what someone says demonstrates 
low moral character? The question presupposes a self-righteous Rigel-
like attitude. "Full of great ways for others to improve without any 
expense to themselves. There's an ego thing in there, too. They use the 
morals to make someone else look inferior and that way look better 
themselves. It doesn't matter what the moral code is- religious morals, 
political morals, racist morals, capitalist morals, feminist morals, 
hippie morals-they're all the same. The moral codes change but the 
meanness and the egotism stay the same." (Lila, 7)  

[Ant] 
> >So, by offering a Dynamic way forward (rather than
> >backwards towards Victorianism), the MOQ offers society genuine hope
> >(as Kevin might be interested in hearing).

[Platt] 
> The way forward according the Pirsig is not to adopt another amorphous
> soup of hippie sentiments but to recognize morality as being the
> foundation of reality.
> 
> Ant McWatt comments:
> 
> I think you’ve still got your ideological blinkers on.   Pirsig’s
> morality is one where Freedom is the highest value which is just what
> traditional hippies such as Skip Stone are saying.  As the latter stated
> above:

Pirsig's morality encompasses a whole lot more than Freedom, as you 
well know.

>  “The way of the hippie is antithetical to all repressive hierarchical
> power structures since these are adverse to the hippie goals of peace,
> love and freedom.”
> 
> Freedom is discussed in some detail in LILA.  Furthermore, Pirsig has
> noted to me that Love – in the sense of everything that exists - is a
> synonym of Quality.  (That the MOQ can be considered as a “Metaphysics
> of Love” shouldn’t be too much of a surprise considering that an
> original 1950s hippy wrote it).   If you want to consider “love” in the
> narrower sense (as work in developing other people’s intellectual
> abilities and sense of Dynamic Quality), this is covered in some detail
> in M. Scott-Peck’s “The Road Less Travelled”.  Peace, if defined as
> harmony between people or groups, is high quality social interaction.

Nice try. You took a lot of time and trouble to write this post. But 
when all is said and done, we end up with the same amorphous soup of 
sentiments we started with. But your recommendation that we join 
extremist global pressure groups like Greenpeace or the Campaign for 
Nuclear Disarmament (CND) reveals what I suspected all along about the 
current hippie agenda -- in lockstep with the radical left wing.

Best regards,
Platt