[MD] Social Level- Catholic Social Teaching

[MarshaV]

Bravo!  Bravo!!!  Bravo, bravo, bravo!!!  This was wonderful!



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 5:10 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Social Level- Catholic Social Teaching


>
> 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.
>
>
>