[MD] Politics and Change

[david buchanan]

HZ said:
...About a particular history, that of the US, of Victorian GB etc. And the 
analysis is convincing, but what with the Bolshevik/ Chinese revolutions, 
the WWII, the reshuffling of the balkans and the Middle East after the fall 
of the Ottoman Empire, India, revolutions in Latin America? Do you think 
Pisrigs explanation "fits all"? No. It offers a mode of analysis, of 
understanding.

dmb says:
Do I think the conflict between social and intellectual values can be used 
as a way to analyze conflicts around the globe, to analyze the events in 
China, Slovenia, the world wars and such? Yep. I surely do. Not least of all 
because conflicts in the "third world" are almost alway a result of the 
vestigages of colonialism. In that sense, yes, I think the MOQ's insight 
"fits all". As I understand it, the wide variety of reactionary movements we 
are presently witnessing (various kinds of fascists and fundamentalists such 
as Bin Ladin, Franco, Falwell, and the Moonies) can all be seen as 
anti-intellectual.

HZ said:
Btw, the example in Slovenia (as small a state it might be) on how a 
intellectual values reshape the society, or how this happened also in the 
foundation of the Turkish republic, or to certain degrees the Cuban 
revolution and of course the Calvinist reformations are solid examples of 
how the intellect can read the social value systems and from the truths they 
derive from them influence it through radical or ethical stances.

dmb says:
I'm not sure what you mean here, but let me use Slovenia as an example of 
how the conflict between social and intellectual values can be used to shed 
light on the political struggles of our era. Its a little strange and 
complicated but we can still see the same basic conflict at work. The 
government of the former Yugoslavia was not exactly a great example of an 
intellectually guided society but it found itself in the strange position of 
having to keep several different ethnic groups within the laws of a single 
nation. During that time, some would argue that it was done for the greater 
good, these various cultures were more or less supressed or made to conform. 
And we all saw what happened when that government fell, namely each of these 
groups re-asserted their own culture and traditions and attempted to gain 
independence from or even dominance over the others. So what we saw in the 
former Yugoslavia was a war of one fascist movement against other fascists 
movement. I believe it was the Serbian political party whose slogan was, The 
Right party, Right now. (Which wouldn't be an inaccurate slogan for Bush's 
party or Fox News, by the way.) And that's pretty typical of what goes on 
when social values are suppressed or threatened of denigrated. These social 
level values have something like an immune system built right into them to 
protect themselves from other tribes or nations, etc. But for the past 100 
years or so this immune system reacts to intellectual values as if they were 
an alien threat. That's why we see insane stuff like the suppression of 
scientific facts about everything from evolution to global warming. That's 
why we see an anti-intellectual uber-American cowboy in the White House. 
(George and I have something in common, a number we share. 98.6 is my body 
temperature and his IQ.)

Iraq, by the way, is similar to the former Yugoslavia. It is a nation 
invented by the Brits, one that pays no respect to the cultural and 
religious differences within its territory. This is why civil war was so 
easy to predict. The social values of the majority of the population have 
been suppressed by a small minority with big guns. As nasty as he was, 
Saddam's government held this water and oil mixture together with vigorous 
shaking. Remove that artificial bonding agent and presto, you've got 
"sectarian violence" or, as it is uneuphemistically called, civil war.

I'm not saying that the social/intellectual conflict is the only factor, but 
it can be seen as an underlying cause in just about any conflict you'd care 
to name. Sometimes one has to suspend certain ideas about who are the good 
guys and who are the bad guys and overcome certain prejudices, but I've yet 
to find a case where Pirsig's insight didn't shed some light on the 
situation.

Thanks,
dmb

_________________________________________________________________
Booking a flight? Know when to buy with airfare predictions on MSN Travel. 
http://travel.msn.com/Articles/aboutfarecast.aspx&ocid=T001MSN25A07001