[MD] Barbarians & Hippies

[Platt Holden]

> Ant McWatt concluded March 5th:
> 
> 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.
> 
> >Platt Holden made an SOM confusion and so responded March 14th:
> >
> >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 Holden then misleadingly added March 15th:
> 
> The intellectual revolution failed because of SOM assumptions. The
> hippie revolution failed because it rejected both social and
> intellectual patterns.
> 
> "The Hippie rejection of social and intellectual patterns left just two
> directions to go: toward biological quality and toward Dynamic Quality.
> The revolutionaries of the sixties thought that since both are
> antisocial, and since both are anti-intellectual, why then they must
> both be the same. That was the mistake." (Lila, 24)
> 

Ant McWatt made an SOM confusion and misleadingly stated:

> And that mistake (of confusing biological patterns with Dynamic Quality)
> is also an SOM error because SOM (as viewed in LILA) doesn’t recognise
> Dynamic Quality!

SOM doesn't recognize DQ and it doesn't recognize MOQ biological 
patterns either. In fact, SOM is blind to the MOQ moral hierarchy. So 
it couldn't have been confused about something it knows nothing about. 
Hippies didn't recognize MOQ patterns either, but thought both 
intellectuals and society were worthless and turned against both for 
the sake of the biological pleasures of drugs and sex. 

> ---snip----
> 
> >BTW, as an uncritical supporter of the Establishment’s
> >mouthpieces such as Limbaugh and Fox News you’d do well to note the
> >following:
> >
> >“[Phaedrus] wondered why that statement had angered him so much in the
> >first place. It had seemed so natural.  Why had it taken so long to see
> >that what it really said was ‘What you like is bad, or at least
> >inconsequential.’  What was behind this smug presumption that what
> >pleased you was bad, or at least unimportant in comparison to other
> >things?  It seemed the quintessence of the squareness he was fighting.
> >Little children were trained not to do ‘just what they liked’ but - but
> >what? - Of course!  What others liked.  And which others?  Parents,
> >teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators.
> >All authorities.  When you are trained to despise ‘just what you like’
> >then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others... 
> >a good slave.  When you learn not to do ‘just what you like’ then the
> >System loves you.”  (ZMM, Chapter 19)
> >
> >Now, Platt, which 1960s cultural group does this anti-authoritarian
> >sentiment remind you of?  The Republican Party???
> 
> Platt answered:
> 
> The Libertarian party.
> 
> Ant McWatt comments:
> 
> Exactly.  Now doesn’t that quote make you think Platt?  Or maybe that’s
> the trouble?  You’re relying on authority figures to do your political
> thinking for you!!!

Make me think of what, Ant? That you rely on authority figures like 
Greenpeace and CND to do your political thinking for you?  

> Platt continued:
> 
> As for mouthpieces, add Pirsig to Limbaugh and Fox News because, unlike
> liberal academe and the major media, all place high value on individual
> freedom and the free market.
> 
> Ant McWatt comments:
> 
> That’s nearly an hilarious combination.  I doubt Pirsig would be too
> happy to be put in a group with political propagandists such as Limbaugh
> and Fox News.  American intellectuals such as Thoreau, William James,
> Steinbeck and Ginsberg would, no doubt, be more his scene!

I think Pirsig would feel right at home with Buckley, Friedman, Hazlitt 
and Scalia. I think he's far more broadminded than you. 

> Anyway, Lim-baa-aaah and Fox News are part of the mainstream media so
> its no surprize then that they would tell you that a./ the mass media is
> dominated by liberals and b./ liberal academe doesn’t place high value
> on individual freedom.   Of course, we know a./ is largely false (and,
> therefore, misleading) because when I carefully examined the papers
> cited by the Media Resources Center’s website early last year
> (concerning media bias) it became apparent that there was little bona
> fide independent research provided by them to support their view that
> the media has a liberal bias (and the small amount of credible evidence
> that was provided by them was out-of-date).  Still waiting for a
> well-researched response about media bias from you about this.

The reason you dismissed the evidence presented in the Media Resource 
Center was because of your liberal bias going in. I fully expect your 
dubious "critical analysis" to be the same regarding the following:

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

that begins as follows:

"Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist"

"Date: December 14, 2005"

"While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, 
the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New 
York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it 
leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative 
compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all 
major media outlets tilt to the left.

"These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, 
which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively 
quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them 
accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because 
surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than 
Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the 
study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the 
distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to 
members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and 
significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co-
author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public 
policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of 
Economics, which will become available in mid-December." 

[Ant]
> If you read my Education paper at robertpirsig.org, you will also see
> that Pirsig places academic freedom (an intellectual value) over the
> economic free market (which is a social value).  And, all I can say is
> thank Zeus for that!

That's why legislatures should adopt the Academic Bill of Rights to
ensure diversity of thought on campus.  

> >Platt Holden quoted “The Bible”, Chapter 29, verse something or other

> 
> So now you mock Pirsig just to get in a dig at me? Strange.
> 
> Ant McWatt comments:
> 
> My purpose was not to mock Pirsig here.  I’m actually concerned that you
> keep quoting Pirsig out-of-context (just like a Fundamentalist Christian
> quotes the Bible) to support the Establishment views (as propounded by
> Lim-baa-aaah and Fox News) that you keep uncritically dumping on this
> Discussion group.

Quoting out of context? When? You just don't want to admit that Pirsig 
doesn't support your hippie views. 

> Next time, try and ask a few questions beforehand: 
> why is this particular news story being discussed today?  Whose values
> are being put forward here?  What is the evidence that these people are
> telling the truth?  What are opposing commentators (or commentators from
> other countries) saying?  (These scare stories concerning Iran would be
> a good start.)

Why don't you ask those questions to support your "scare stories" 
accusation? 

> As I mentioned on March 6th, I think Pirsig tries to be very fair in
> seeing the benefits and drawbacks of differing political viewpoints and
> different cultures though if you look at his history you can see his
> ideas being a development of the 1950s/60s hippy ethos and the 20th
> century liberal intellectual tradition.   However, if it wasn’t for the
> independent mind that this anti-authoritarian background gave him, he
> wouldn’t have realised, for instance, why a free market (in an economic
> context) is the best one to hold in theory and how it can be combined
> with progressive liberal thinking. 
>    (Of course, as Northrop notes, there is no such thing as a free
>    market 
> economy – maybe such a state of affairs can only be reached when all the
> countries in the world no longer exist but that’s another story).

Where has Pirsig written about how the free market can be combined with 
progressive liberal thinking? What is "progressive liberal thinking" 
anyway?  Something one hears at a Greenpeace meeting or among the 
marchers at a CND rally? 

Best regards,
Platt