[MD] atomic bomb and torture

[Platt Holden]

To Lurker Elizabeth Graves:

> Sorry I may be pathetically stupid but in the Platt and Arlo discussion
> Platt, cant the same argument be made for the middle eastern countries
> in that they feel that their civilization is threatened hence they have
> a right to defend their culture and ipso facto who is to decide whose
> civilization is to take priority  Guess Platt can even incite the
> lurkers to find a voice

According to Pirsig some wars are justified. He cites the example of 
the U.S. Civil War in Chapter 13 of Lila. The landowners of the South 
(like your example of middle eastern countries) felt that the North 
"threatened their civilization and hence they had the right to defend 
their culture." Deciding whose civilization took priority was a matter 
of principle based on evolutionary morality. Pirsig explained:

"When the United States drafted troops for the Civil War everyone knew 
that innocent people would be murdered. 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."  (Lila, 13)

An evolutionary morality also concludes that some cultures are better 
than others, as Pirsig explained in the following passage:

"Cultures can be graded and judged morally according to their 
contribution to the evolution of life. A culture that supports the 
dominance of social values over biological values is an absolutely 
superior culture to one that does not, and a culture that supports the 
dominance of intellectual values over social values is absolutely 
superior to one that does not. It is immoral to speak against a people 
because of the color of their skin, or any other genetic characteristic 
because these are not changeable and don't matter anyway. But it is not 
immoral to speak against a person because of his cultural 
characteristics if those cultural characteristics are-immoral. These 
are changeable and they do matter." (Lila, Chap. 24)

The evolutionary morality that Pirsig describes in Lila helps solve all 
sorts of moral questions such as the one you bring up. Although many on 
this site prefer to discuss philosophical abstractions, it's also 
challenging to the apply philosophy to questions that arise in daily 
life. Since most questions are moral questions (Is this good or bad, 
right or wrong?), I find the MOQ extremely helpful. 

Platt