[MD] atomic bomb and torture

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt]
I wonder if at your convenience you would take some time to document the moral
positions you describe below, citing quotes to substantiate your
interpretations of the MOQ. I've tried to come up with suitable references but
couldn't find where Pirsig said the things you attribute to him.

[Arlo]
Fair enough. And in doing so, if you disagree, perhaps you could find me the
appropriate references in Pirsig that demonstrate my error.

My post indicated that although "killing biological threats to social patterns
is justified", there are three caveats.

(1) The biological threat must be real and immediate. 
(2) Killing non-threatening Person B in order to stop biologically-threatening
Person A is not justified.
(3) The threat MUST be biological.

To the first, of course, is Pirsig's oft-quoted assessment of capital
punishment. "When a society is not itself threatened, as in the execution of
individual criminals, the issue becomes more complex... if an established
social structure is not seriously threatened by a criminal, then an
evolutionary morality would argue that there is no moral justification for
killing him."

To the second, Pirsig had said the following, "A primitive isolated village
threatened by brigands has a moral right and obligation to kill them in
self-defense since a village is a higher form of evolution." Here he is clear
in that the "self-defense" of "killing" is directed towards the threat, "them"
are the "brigands".

It is true, that Pirsig writes on the Civil War, "... everyone knew that
innocent people would be murdered [note the use of the word "murder" -Arlo].
The North could have permitted the slave states to become independent and saved
hundreds of thousands of lives. But an evolutionary morality argues that the
North was right in pursuing that war because a nation is a higher form of
evolution than a human body, and the principle of human equality is an even
higher form than a nation". Although this one statement "a nation is a higher
form of evolution than a human body" is immediately contradicted when he says
"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", I think this to come about because Pirsig is talking about the
Civil War being a war of Intellect (Freedom) versus society (slavery). In ZMM,
Pirsig calls the atomic detonations in Japan, a "mass destruction of human
beings". Since these "human beings" take moral precedence over "society", and
constituted the deaths of hundreds of thousands who posed no "serious threat to
establish social structures", I hardly can see how it can be considered
"moral". 

To the third is Pirsig's statement, "Just as it is more moral for a doctor to
kill a germ than a patient, so it is more moral for an idea to kill a society
than it is for a society to kill an idea." My statement that given that the
world at large is still operating under a SOM mindset, and that makes it hard
for me to believe that any ONE nation would have exercised unanimous moral
judgement with MOQ morals, is simply a call to beware that you are not favoring
state-apoligism over "fair and balanced" MOQ criticism. That the U.S., for
example, has been able to always determine when a threat is "biological" and
when it is "intellectual", when a threat is "immediate" and when there is no
real threat, in alignment with the MOQ is placing the MOQ subordinate to static
social patterns, making the MOQ an apologist philosophy for U.S. actions. 

Some other Pirsig quotes on war worth considering. Emphasis added by me.

"With Victorian spirits atrophied and their minds hemmed in by social
restraints, all avenues to any quality other than social quality were closed.
And so this social base which had no intellectual meaning and no biological
purpose slowly and helplessly drifted toward its own stupid self-destruction:
toward the SENSELESS MURDER of millions of its own children on the battlefields
of World War I."

"The Victorian social system and the Victorian morality that led into World War
I had portrayed war as an adventurous conflict between noble individuals
engaged in the idealistic service of their country: a kind of extended
knighthood." (sound familiar?)

"... 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." (the natural consequence or moral egotism... sound familiar?)

Arlo