[MD] Intellectual activity

[david buchanan]

Alice, Platt, Ian and y'all:

Platt said:
"This is emblematic of the battle between conservatives and liberals today. 
If individual "rights" are dependent on a vote of the majority (others 
agreeing to it), then they are subject to change at the whim of the mob. By 
contrast, if rights are "unalienable" (right to Life, Liberty and the 
Pursuit of Happiness) as claimed in the Declaration of Independence and come 
not from man but from man's Creator, then they are immutable. The question 
then becomes, "Under which idea would you rather live?"

Alice replied:
So it would seem that you believe that for one to claim such a thing as an 
"inalienable right" one would have to believe in a diety. I think I agree 
with you and that is actually the problem I have with the idea of 
inalienable rights. For me, rights are not inalienable. They are agreed upon 
by the society in which one lives. Now as you allude to, I would much rather 
live in a society which offered more rights than less. And I would like them 
to be written down and arguable.

dmb says:
I think Pirsig is saying neither thing about rights. I think he's trying to 
avoid both of those options....

Pirsig in Lila, chapter 24:
"What passed for morality within this crowd (liberal intellectuals) was a 
kind of vague, amorphous soup of sentiments known as "human rights". You 
were also supposed to be "reasonable". What these terms really meant was 
never spelled out in any way that Phaedrus had ever heard. You were just 
supposed to cheer for them. He knew now that the reason nobody ever spelled 
them out was nobody ever could. In a subject-object understanding of the 
world these terms have no meaning.

There is no such thing as "human rights". There is no such thing as moral 
reasonableness. There are subjects and objects and nothing else. This soup 
of sentiments about logically non-existent entities can be straightened out 
by the MOQ. It says that what is meant by 'human rights' is usually the 
moral code of intellect-vs-society; the moral right of intellect to be free 
of social control. Freedom of speech; freedom of assembly, of travel; trial 
by jury;  habeus corpus; government by consent - these 'human rights' are 
all  intellect-vs-society issues.  According to the MOQ these "human rights" 
have not just a sentimental basis, but a rational, metaphysical basis. They 
are essential to the evolution of a higher level of life. They are for real. 
...Unless you separate these two levels of moral codes you get a paralyzing 
confusion as to whether society is moral or immoral. That paralyzing 
confusion is what dominates all thoughts about morality and society today." 
"

dmb continues:
I'd guess that Matt, Ian and the other pragmatists would object to Pirsig's 
assertion here. But there certainly is some overlap too. I mean, Pirsig 
feels that the Pragmatism of William James was inadequate and so I think 
Platt is right about that. But the MOQ is also anti-theistic and the 
assertion that rights are sanctioned by God otherwise confuses philosophical 
assertions with religious ones. Pirsig is clearly asserting that "human 
rights" have a "rational, metaphysical basis". Despite this, the MOQ also 
asserts that these "rights" exist because they are "agreed upon", at least 
in some sense, as Alice and the pragmatists would put it. How can both be 
true? How can rights be "for real" and based on what's "agreed upon" at the 
same time? I don't think this is a contradiction at all. Its not easy to 
talk about, so I'll let the following quote do the talking. There are some 
further comments below this passage....

Pirsign in Lila:
    "The Proto-Indo-European root of aret was the morpheme rt. There, beside 
areti, was a treasure room of other derived "rt" words: "arithmetic," 
"aristocrat," "art," "rhetoric," "worth," "rite," "ritual," "wright," "right 
(handed)" and "right (correct)." All of these words except arithmetic seemed 
to have a vague thesaurus-like similarity to Quality. Phredrus studied them 
carefully, letting them soak in, trying to guess what sort of concept, what 
sort of way of seeing the world, could give rise to such a collection. When 
the morpheme appeared in aristocrat and arithmetic the reference was to 
"firstness." Rt meant first. When it appeared in art and wright it seemed to 
mean "created" and "of beauty." "Ritual" suggested repetitive order. And the 
word right has two meanings: "righthanded" and "moral and esthetic 
correctness." When all these meanings were strung together a fuller picture 
of the ft morpheme emerged. Rt referred to the "first, created, beautiful 
repetitive order of moral and esthetic correctness."

There was just one thing wrong with this Proto-Indo-European discovery, 
something Phredrus had tried to sweep under the carpet at first, but which 
kept creeping out again. The meanings, grouped together, suggested something 
different from his interpretation of arete. They suggested "importance" but 
it was an importance that was formal and social and procedural and 
manufactured, almost an antonym to the (Dynamic) Quality he was talking 
about. Rt meant "quality" all right but the quality it meant was static, not 
Dynamic. He had wanted it to come out the other way, but it looked as though 
it wasn't going to do it. Ritual. That was the last thing he wanted arete to 
turn out to be. Bad news.

It was in this gloomy mood, while he was thinking about all the 
interpretations of the rt morpheme, that yet another "find" came. He had 
thought that surely this time he had reached the end of the Quality-arete-rt 
trail. But then from the sediment of old memories his mind dredged up a word 
he hadn't thought about or heard of for a long time:

R-ta. It was a Sanskrit word, and Phredrus remembered what it meant: R-ta 
was the "cosmic order of things." Then he remembered he had read that the 
Sanskrit language was considered the most faithful to the 
Proto-Indo-European root, probably because the linguistic patterns had been 
so carefully preserved by the Hindu priests.

He thought he'd forgotten all those words years ago, but now here was Rta, 
back again. Rta, from the oldest portion of the Rg Veda, which was the 
oldest known writing of the Indo-Aryan language. The sun god, Surya, began 
his chariot ride across the heavens from the abode of rta. Varuna, the god 
for whom the city in which Phredrus was studying was named (Varanasi), was 
the chief support of rta.

Varuna was omniscient and was described as ever witnessing the truth and 
falsehood of men-as being "the third whenever two plot in secret." He was 
essentially a god of righteousness and a guardian of all that is worthy and 
good.

The physical order of the universe is also the moral order of the universe. 
Rta is both. This was exactly what the Metaphysics of Quality was claiming. 
It was not a new idea. It was the oldest idea known to man.

This identification of rta and arete was enormously valuable, Phredrus 
thought, because it provided a huge historical panorama in which the 
fundamental conflict between static and Dynamic Quality had been worked out. 
It answered the question of why arete meant ritual. R-ta also meant ritual. 
But unlike the Greeks, the Hindus in their many thousands of years of 
cultural evolution had paid enormous attention to the conflict between 
ritual and freedom. Their resolution of this conflict in the Buddhist and 
Vedantist philosophies is one of the profound achievements of the human 
mind.

The original meaning of rta, during what is called the Brahmana period of 
Indian history, underwent a change to extremely ritualistic static patterns 
more rigid and detailed than anything heard of in Western religion. . As 
Hiriyanna wrote, "All that came to be insisted upon was a scrupulous 
carrying out of every detail connected with the various rites; and the good 
result accruing from them, whether here or elsewhere, was believed to follow 
automatically from it. . . . Ritualistic punctilio thus comes to be placed 
on the same level as natural law and moral rectitude."

You don't have to look far in the modern world to find similar conditions, 
Phredrus thought.

But what made the Hindu experience so profound was that this decay of 
Dynamic Quality into static quality was not the end of the story. Following 
the period of the Brahmanas came the Upanishadic period and the flowering of 
Indian philosophy. Dynamic Quality reemerged within the static patterns of 
Indian thought.

"Rta," Hiriyanna had written, "almost ceased to be used in Sanskrit; but. . 
. under the name of dharma, the same idea occupies a very important place in 
the later Indian views of life also."

Dharma, like Rta, means "what holds together." It is the basis of all order. 
It equals righteousness. It is the ethical code. It is the stable condition 
which gives man perfect satisfaction.

Dharma is duty. It is not external duty which is arbitrarily imposed by 
others. It is not any artificial set of conventions which can be amended or 
repealed by legislation. Neither is it internal duty which is arbitrarily 
decided by one's own conscience. Dharma is beyond all questions of what is 
internal and what is external. Dharma is Quality itself, the principle of 
"rightness" which gives structure and purpose to the evolution of all life 
and to the evolving understanding of the universe which life has created."

Alice said:
The idea of  "rights" has in my estimation, evolved. It was not so long ago 
that "the divine right of kings" existed. How can this be so? Did God change 
his mind?

dmb says:
Maybe the long quote about different forms of the word "right" begins to 
answer your question, eh? In some sense the divine right of kings is totally 
at odds with Modern human rights. But from a big picture, evolutionary and 
historical perspective we can say that both kinds of rights are correct, 
were good, or otherwise recognize the quality of the cultural values they 
assert. And then within evolutionary structure and the moral codes we can 
assert that human rights is basically a set of intellectual values while the 
divine right of kings was a social level value. This arrangement might 
strike terror in the hearts of today's liberals, but it worked for a long 
time. And today's liberal democracies still retain some kind of chief 
executive, which must be something like a democratic version of this same 
social role. So, its not that God changed his mind. Its that Western culture 
has evolved beyond Gods and Kings. Or at least we hope so.

Platt said:
The liberal view that objective truth doesn't exist leads inevitably to an 
attitude of all-embracing tolerance. When one truth is as good as another 
and the only thing you really believe in is the other guy's right to believe 
and do what she wants, then you exhibit a superior and enlightened attitude. 
It also means you have no beliefs worth defending. So we see appeasement 
towards law breakers, both here in the U.S. and internationally. Can anarchy 
or totalitarianism be far behind? "

dmb replies:
The liberal view that objective truth doesn't exist? Liberals think rights 
depend on the "whim of the mob"? I think you're confusing liberalism with 
relativism, as conservatives often do. I would also point out that Pirsig 
isn't exactly pushing "objective truth" and I just tried to explain 
something about the sense in which human rights are "agreed upon" within the 
MOQ. But I'd like to talk about liberalism in the conventional world, 
especially as it relates to rights. There is a libertarian faction within 
conservatism. And the Libertarian Party is conservative in some sense of the 
word. And this ideology can also be called classical liberalism. Despite 
Platt's assertions, liberalism has always been all about rights. And it is 
only a certain kind of conservative that shares this concern for rights. 
Civil libertarians, for example, are mostly associated with liberalism. The 
American Civil Liberties Union is loved by the left and hated by the 
conservatives precisely because it defends rights. Civil rights attorneys 
are almost alway liberal. And who is making the most noise about rights 
presently? What current administration is thrashing rights over the 
objections of liberals? I mean, if Platt or anyone else wants to assert 
human rights its quite alright with me. But the suggestion that 
conservatisim is all about individual rights simply doesn't comport with 
reality. On the conservative movement, conservative George Nash (o pages 
250-251) writes...

"Yet by the middle and late sixties, sevaeral factors favored the growth of 
a more majoritarian conservatism. ...Suddenly a new rhetoric seemed 
essential. As Francis Wilson put it, 'public order rather than individual 
rights become [sic] increasingly our contemporary issue'. Finally, the trend 
toward majoritarianism was enormously stimulated by a series of Supreme 
Court decisions that aroused not just conservative intellectuals but broad 
segments of the populace of right-wingers could now, at long last, 
cultivate. These included policemen and law enforceent officials enraged by 
Court decisions which protected the 'rights' of criminals; millions of 
Americans who could not understand why the  'rights' of atheists should 
prevent the voluntary reading of the Lord's Prayer and the Bible in public 
schools; Americans angry about 'permisiveness' and Court rulings on 
pornography; politicians astounded by the Court's reapportionment decisions; 
and anti-Communists alarmed at the Court's continual blows at congressional 
investigations and cold war legislation."

"Although Struass would eventually identify Machiavelli as the principle 
villain of his intellectual genealogy, in the early 1950's it was Thomas 
Hobbes who seemed to him to be the father of modern political philsophy. It 
was Hobbes who inititated a revolutionary break with ancient or classical 
teachings, It was Hobbes who repudiated the natural law tradition for 
natural 'rights'." (Nash, page 51)

"Kendall contrasted true, conservative criteria for evaluating regeimes ( 
justice, the common good) with false, liberal criteria (individual rights, 
equality). Indeed, there lay the 'ultimate issue': natural law versus 
relativism and self-interest, the Great Tradition versus liberalism" (Nash 
page 236)

"Walter Berns excoriated the Supreme Court for confused, tortured and unjust 
decisions. The source of the Court's errors was not a particular individual 
but a pernicious political philosophy called liberalism that had become an 
American tradition. What was this 'liberalism'? It was, said Berns, the 
philosophy of 'natural rights', 'individualism' and the idea of a 'hostile 
state' originated by Thomas Hobbes and perpetuated by John Locke. For these 
men and for all subsequent liberals, political inquiry began with supposedly 
inalienable, antesedent RIGHTS of man, against which was poised the state. 
Liberty VERSUS government: this was the liberal conception, of which the 
Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were American 
expressions. ...Moreover, liberalism constantly assumed that freedom was the 
highest ideal." (Nash, pages 220-1. Emphasis is the author's)

dmb resumes:
I should mention that all this business about natural law and natural rights 
is just a different way to talk about original sin and the noble savage, as 
was discussed in the thread on Indian values. The simple way Wilson sums it 
up is nice: order versus freedom. Are MOQ bells ringing in your head here? I 
think they should be. See, one of the main reasons to like the MOQ is that 
SOM does seem to offer an impossible choice: nihilistic relativism or 
faith-based dogma? If I thought those were the only choices, I'd be tempted 
to blow my freakin' brains out. Thankfully, Pirsig and Wilber and others are 
pointing out that those are not the only choices. I've heard people say lots 
of different things about the Buddhist "middle way" and really don't know 
who is right or what it originally meant or whatever. But, in this case at 
least, I think the MOQ offers a middle way between nihilism and dogma. I 
don't mean it has a little bit of both, I mean it avoids both. He's not 
pushing God or free love. Instead, the MOQ takes account of the political 
struggle between those who are pushing one or the other and tries to make 
sense of it all. Don't you think?

Anyway, it seems to me that the MOQ's evolutionary hierarchy gives us the 
tools to justify human rights and other intellectual values without 
resorting to any invocations of God. As Pirsig paints it, rights are not 
just arbitrary social conventions, but they're not endowed by Nature's God 
either. If I could update Jefferson's phrase "we hold these truths to be 
self-evident" I'd probably recast it as something like "we think its true 
because it just seems so obviously right". Its not that this assertion by 
itself gets us off the hook or otherwise takes the place of a rational, 
reasonable, believeable argument in favor of human rights. I'm just saying 
there is something of the hot stove example in this. There is something 
about the rightness of rights that touches on the concept of dharma and the 
cosmic order of things. I mean, even though it is a static intellectual 
principle, there is something very BAM! about the correctness of it, you 
know? Its one of those things people like right away. I can understand why 
some people think it is sanctioned by God, but I think that what we're 
actually talking about is a "qualified" form of liberalism, one where the 
"qualified" pun is fully intentional.

Thanks.
dmb

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