[MD] Fw: Food for Thought

[David M]

Hi DMB

I think that's pretty much right. But there is a debate to be
had about what we want to release from repression and
what we need to keep repressed. But I have concerns
about loaded metaphors about keeping a lid on nature,
this can be easily be misused to maintain forms of anti-democratic
control  and those whose values we don't like. But yes there
are things that we cannot have without check and remain social and 
intelectual.

David M

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 7:47 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Fw: Food for Thought


> DMB quoted from Lila:
> "Society exists primarily to free people from these biological chains. It
> has done that job so stunningly well intellectual forget the fact and turn
> upon society with a shameful ingratitude for what society has done. Today 
> we
> are living in an intellectual and technological paradise and a moral and
> social nightmare because the intellectual level of evolution, in its
> struggle to become free of the social level, has ignored the social 
> level's
> role in keeping the biological level under control. Intellectuals have
> failed to understand the ocean of biological quality that is constantly
> being suppressed by social order." (307-8)
>
> DM replied:
> I ask: what is this trying to say? I think we all understand that society
> imposes rules & customs on us as individuals to suppress violent means to
> resolve conflicts, helping us to co-operate better, share out resources
> jointly created, and find mates in more complex ways, etc. Then along come
> the intellectuals. They do a number of things, they challenge the social
> order and who has authority, they challenge the church and the 
> aristocrats,
> they want more individual freedom, they champion repressed minorities, 
> they
> say sex can be good and fun and is not a sin in itself, they champion
> democracy and liberty and equality. So intellectuals want to make the 
> rules
> of society different and less oppressive. But Pirsig thinks they went too
> far. Did they? Maybe when they got rid of the old repressions, and the old
> rulers, there was a bit of a gap, a confusion about values, but would we
> want to go backwards? Is the problem not our failure of nerve and a real
> pressing forward with democracy and our liberal values?
>
> dmb says:
> Pirsig's complaint does not suggest we go backwards. It simply says that 
> we
> have to realize that the social leve is supposed to keep a lid on biology
> but has to stay out of the business of suppressing the intellect. See, the
> whole point in making a distinction between the levels is to sort these
> thing out. Pressing forward with democracy and liberal values is much more
> difficult without those distinctions because without them we can't tell 
> the
> difference between free speech and pornography, between freedom of human
> rights and free love. Pirsig is saying that intellectuals are right to try
> to prevent social codes from encroaching in freedom of conscience and
> thought but they are wrong to the extent that biological quality is 
> allowed
> to get out of the bottle.
>
> This is one of those areas of the MOQ that might make liberal 
> intellectuals
> feel a bit uncomfortable. Its one of those area where Pirsig changed my
> mind. We could even say that it is a conservative idea or at least an idea
> that traditionalist would tend to like. Pirsig is saying that this should
> not be seen as merely arbitrary authority but as a evolutionary advance, 
> one
> worth preserving for the sake of further evolutionary movement. He's 
> saying
> we should dust off those old traditons to see what it is they've
> accomplished, to comprehend the point and purpose of these forms of social
> control. Of course we don't have to buy them all lock, stock and barrel 
> but
> its foolish to toss these into the trash. He's saying saying that these
> forms of "repression" should be carefully re-examined.
>
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