[MD] Intellectual activity

[ian glendinning]

DMB, Platt, et al

(Aaah, my favourite Pirsig passages - the "rt" etymology - Just been
listening to a Wittgenstein discussion - the evolution of language is
just part of Pirsig's evolutionary scheme.)

Anyway, when Platt said "The question then becomes, Under which idea
would you rather live?", and DMB replies " I think Pirsig is saying
neither thing .... he's trying to avoid both of those options ....

I agree with DMB. (Platt as usual sets up some grotesque alternatives
as if that's all we have to chose between, and in doing so implies one
of us has even suggested either of them. Pointless binary arguments,
inadequate logic. Windmills and armies of sheep.)

Inalienable rights just "seem obviously true" from a given perspective
of socio-intellectual evolution. Fortunately we've continued to
evolve.

Ian

On 5/14/06, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 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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