[MD] -elitist ideas

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Case <Case at iSpots.com>:

> [Case]
> Well you called it right from my end. First the moral order business. If you
> elect to call magnetism and gravity moral laws at the inorganic level I
> think it is a bit silly but previously was willing to say, no harm done.
> After all calling them such has the potential to inject a bit if rigor into
> thinking about social morality which is what I thought Pirsig was up to.
> Unfortunately all this does is introduce slop into the inorganic level.

Actually the inorganic level is fairly sloppy as it is with many interpretations
of quantum weirdness being bandied about.

> The same holds with "betterness" it only makes a hint of sense when you
> define in such a way as to render the term meaningless. Better is a relative
> term that only makes sense with respect to the person stating that this is
> better than that. There is not "betterness" out there in the future
> directing us this way or that way; waving to us and beckoning us forward.

I love they way you make such definitive statements about "what's out there in
the future," as if you know. Of course, I assume you consider your belief about
there being no future betterness waving to us is a better belief than its 
opposite.  

> Betterness is in fact a wholly subjective term. You could I suppose claim
> that it is "better" to live than to die and therefore that which supports
> life is "better" that that which does not. Survival for species and cultures
> could then be regarded as the highest "Good". I kind of like that one but it
> does point to some kind of ultimate specialization with a master species
> whose survival is the highest "betterness." But the question is always
> begged, better for who? Better than what? 

You belie your objection to betterness by the very beliefs you express which
I presume you consider much, much better than the alternatives since you express
them with such certainty. Anyway, even my cat, like a bacterium, knows when "It's
better here than there." And for all we know, so does and electron. 

 



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