[MD] Social Level- Catholic Social Teaching

[david buchanan]

Bo said to Steve:
...and this means that absolutely all humans are at the social level because there's no tribe however primitive without a "mythology". Pirsig - on the other hand - seems to regard lawless human behavior as biological value (brigands, bandits etc) but IMO this does not fit, there are rebels who are regarded lawless (Robin Hood) but merely want a better and more just society.

dmb says:
Nonsense. Pirsig's theme on the contrarians is all about being able to distinguish between the criminals and the saints. That's what John Browne's truth was about, that's what the Zuni witchdoctor's trouble with the law was all about and that's what his own biography was all about. Both criminals and contrarians break social level rules but the former does it for degenerate biological reasons while reformers do it for intellectual reasons. Pirsig explains that its hard to tell the difference from the SOM perspective but that the MOQ clears up that confusion.

Bo said:
Right, an intellect-guided society (a culture where intellect is at the helm and have all traditional social institutions under its control) is just what I mean, According to the MOQ "raw" social value looks like evil to intellect, why Western democracies regard Moslem religious despotism with such disgust and wants to convert them  ...even at gunpoint.

dmb says:
Nonsense. The social level is only evil to the extent that it tries to control the intellect. Unlike SOM, the MOQ says that social level values serve a necessary function and it should be allowed to do so. And it certainly is NOT an intellectual or democratic attitude to regard Muslims with disgust. That's George Bush, the neocons, and the social level religious freaks that have run this modern democracy into the ground. People are already talking about impeachment and a war crimes trial. According to the MOQ, I think, these are a bunch of degenerate, neo-Victorian, anti-intellectuals. The war in Iraq is battle between their pre-modern fundamentalism and our pre-modern fundamentalism. Intellect has nothing to do with this. Its just plain old bigotry and greed. 

Steve asked:
Did Pirsig write anything on how humans should treat other humans?

dmb says:
Tons. He thought Rigel and his friends were cruel and judgmental toward Lila and he thought it was moral to try to get them to see that. He cites John Browne and Abraham Lincoln because they served the cause of freedom. He thought it was moral to just let crazy people be crazy for a while. He thought the cops who took him to jail had cruelty in their eyes. He said it was stupid to waste a million lives in the trenches of WW I. He thought it was degenerate for a scientist to "sell-out" for the sake of money. And of course human rights cover a lot of ground when it comes to human dignity and fair treatment. These are among the highest values. This isn't about manners, domestic relations or what we are supposed to do in polite society, of course, but its all about what people do and how they treat each other for doing it. The hierarchy of values even extends into the biological world, so that it is more moral to eat further down the food chain, to eat veggies instead of meat. (I consider chicken to be a vegetable.) And he does not say so explicitly, but we can extrapolate these principles to conclude that we ought not eat people, not even as soylent green, unless you're gonna die otherwise.



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