[MD] Intellectual activity

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt to Alice]
Opinions are sometimes expressed harshly by accusing the other guy of being an
idiot...

[Arlo]
Or a Marxist.

[Platt to Alice]
If you haven't read Lila yet, by all means do so. It represents  Pirsig's latest
thinking whereas his thoughts in Zen were tempered by  New Age fads at the time
it was written.

[Arlo]
By all means, read Lila. However, much better to keep ZMM as your foundation,
and see Lila as emergent from this central idea, rather than dismiss all of ZMM
because it doesn't fit your political ideology.

[Platt to Alice]
Of course, one wonders if the claim that truth is provisional is also
provisional.

[Arlo]
Joyous is the "fact" that at the core of all attempts to symbolically code
"reality" is paradox and recursion.

[Platt to Alice]
it's true that water is H20 in the U.S., Siberia and Timbuktu.

[Arlo]
No, Alice, it's not. And here you'll need to go beyond the SOMist ideology Platt
adheres to. "H20" is simply one possible intellectual pattern to describe
inorganic patterns of value. In a recent post to Craig I included a long quote
from Lila which Pirsig uses to explain why the "objective world" seems similar
to different people.

[Platt to Alice]
The liberal view that objective truth doesn't exist leads inevitably to  an
attitude of all-embracing tolerance.

[Arlo]
This is classic Straussian neoconism. "Objective truth" is a SOM position. Keep
in mind that this is what Platt advocates, not the MOQ. Take a look at my
recent post to Craig, with many full paragraphs from both ZMM and Lila that
represent Pirsig's view on "objective truth". If you want to adhere to an
SOMist view, by all means, that is your choice. But be clear, the MOQ is not
SOM. Of course, if you don't simply dismiss ZMM for being ideological different
from what your Party says, you'll know this.

[Platt to Alice]
So we see appeasement towards law breakers, both here in the U.S. and
internationally. Can anarchy or totalitarianism be far behind?

[Arlo]
Or fascism?

Arlo