[MD] Neoconservatism

[david buchanan]

Arlo and y'all:

Hope you had a chance to see the night sky while you were in Hawaii, Arlo.

Arlo said:
"Neoconservatism" is based on a simple premise. That people, being too 
selfish and stupid to be left to their own devices, need to be controlled by 
"myths" in order to keep from sinking to horrendous depravity.

dmb says:
Yep, its the doctrine of original sin coming back to haunt us. The problem, 
as the neocons and other neoVictorians see it, is too much freedom and not 
enough virtue. Struass was actually interested in excellence in the 
classical sense and was far more sophisticated about this assertion than 
most conservatives, but mostly the neoVictorian idea of "virtue" more 
closely resembles the social level moral codes that "thinkers" like Bill 
Bennet and Pat Robertson are pushing. As Pirsig says, these codes are fine 
as far as they go, but they don't go very far. And, as Pirsig puts it, in 
the hands of Victorians, this sort of virtue became hopelessly static and 
hopelessly stupid, unaware of neither the purpose or orgins. And yet he is 
sympathetic with their point. He also says that SOM has excluded morals, has 
failed to appreciate the valuable task they preform in keeping biological 
impulses under control, failed to see that freedom is about the intellect 
and creativity rather than the body. Scientific materialism has led to 
rather dire situation with respect to hedonism in the culture, whether that 
translates into the sexual freedom of the pleasure-seeking types or into the 
wealth and power-seeking types hardly matters. Anyway, I agree with your 
take. The MOQ is something like a way out while the neocons are only 
offering a way backward.

Arlo quoted from Lila:
"And from the early seventies on there has been a slow confused mindless 
drift back to a kind of pseudo-­Victorian moral posture accompanied by an 
unprecedented and unexplained growth in crime.... The Hippies have been 
interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the period following their 
departure as a "return to values," whatever that means. The Metaphysics of 
Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie revolution was the moral 
movement. The present period is the collapse of values."

Arlo commented on the quote:
Whereas Strauss, and the Neocon Children, advocates retreating to bygone 
days of Unquestioned Patriotism and Obedience to God's Will, hammers used to 
control the masses, Pirsig advocates abandoning the inferior frame of SOM, 
and moving in a new direction.

dmb says:
Yea, and I think that new direction has everything to do with an expansion 
of rationality that neither excludes morals nor asserts a divine sanction 
for them. In the MOQ, the social level moral codes are just one kind of 
morality and there is no part of it that does not have a moral dimension. 
And this allows us to say that freedom is not the problem, freedom is about 
a higher kind of morality. Its not supposed to be about free love or a free 
market, that's just a confusing freedom with biological and social values. 
You know, chasing honey or money is not the same as intellectual creativity 
or following DQ.

Arlo said:
To the cyclical social ills of all ages, Campbell wrote, "schism in the 
soul, schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of 
return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render 
an ideal projected future (futurism)." Here we see another attempt to cast 
the current dichotomy as incomplete. Of the two choices offered, archaism 
represents neoconservatism and futurism represents modern liberalism. We are 
told, always, that these are our only two choices. But they are not.

dmb says:
Right. (I'm a big fan of Campbell's work too.) Just like its not a choice 
between freedom and order. Its not exactly a matter of balancing them 
either. I think part of the MOQ's solution is to show how freedom is 
predicated on order, that order is the way we preserve the evolutionary 
advances that have led to freedom, to show how order serves freedom. But 
getting back to your point...

Arlo said:
It was, in fact, this same archaistic-futuristic dichotomy that underscores 
the rise of Nightmare, as described in the afforementioned series... "In the 
past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways 
of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic 
visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people 
have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as 
managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that 
restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, 
politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they 
will rescue us from
dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand."

dmb says:
Yea, and I'll ask you to nitice the obvious; the shift from progressive hope 
to neocon fear reduces the object of the game to mere survival. I hear this 
in many forms but its really just a variation on the same theme; "dead 
people have no rights" or "you can't be free when you're dead" or something 
along that line. Just after 9/11, I started to develop a theory that fear 
makes people stupid. This little theory has held up pretty well since then 
too.

Arlo said:
Neoconservatism, or Pirsig's "pseudo-­Victorian moral posture", emerged 
during the period Pirsig describes as "The great intellectual revolution of 
the first half of the twentieth century, the dream of a "Great Society" made 
humane by man's intellect, was killed, hoist on its own petard of freedom 
from social restraint." This is paralleled by The Power of Nightmare, which 
advances that...

"Leo Strauss’ ideas about how to transform America were about to become 
powerful and influential, because the liberal political order that had 
dominated America since the war started to collapse.... Only a few years 
before, President Johnson had promised policies that would create a new and 
a better world in America. He had called it "the Great Society."...but now, 
in the wake of some of the worst riots ever seen in America, that dream 
seemed to have ended in violence and hatred."

dmb says:
Well, I think the 60s movement was mostly opposed to racism and war and the 
riots were about the anger over the assassinations of RFK and MLK, who were 
national leaders in the fight against racism and war. It was as if they had 
murdered hope itself. Dreams of justice died there. I think the collective 
heart aches about it still. Pains me just to think of it. But I think that 
"the petard of freedom from social restraint" Pirsig refers to is the sort 
of moral confusion discussed above and is echoed in the quote where social 
level moral codes are described as being caught in the cross-fire. As Pirsig 
puts it, intellect sided with biology so that they were both opposed to 
social level moral restraints. You know, cause morals can't be detected with 
scientific instruments and are "just" subjective.


Into this schism, the failure of "futurism", emerged Neoconservatism. An 
emergence Pirsig describes as "The end of the twentieth century in America 
seems to be an intellectual, social, and economic rust-belt, a whole society 
that has given up on Dynamic improvement and is slowly trying to slip back 
to Victorianism, the last static ratchet-latch." ...How we move depends on 
the choices we are given. In the modern dialogue we have two. Both cast in a 
polar war of Absolute Good versus Absolute Evil. We can choose to side with 
the Neocons, and move unquestioningly back towards
adherence to Myth, to unchallengeable social control via Patriotism and God. 
Or we can move with modern liberalism, a floundering belief in futurism that 
is bogged down in rhetoric it no longer understands.

dmb says:
Well, the thing I like about liberalism is that it is far less utopian than 
socialism, communism and even neoconservatism has tended to be. I like to 
think that the MOQ is metaphysically progressive, that the whole thing is 
aimed at improving everyday life and preserves the ongoing process of 
evolution. I think normal American liberalism can easily be understood as a 
set of principles designed to protect the free flow of ideas, to protect 
intellectual creativity, and generally protect the ability to make further 
improvements in everyday life. What does Pirsig say? Metaphysics is a good 
thing if it can to that, otherwise forget it.

dmb

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