[MD] for Ham

[Ham Priday]

Steve --

> I forget if I posted this, but you were looking for where Pirsig
> calls freedom a negative...
>
> "When they call it freedom, that's not right.  "Freedom" doesn't mean
> anything.  Freedom's just an escape from something negative.  The real
> reason it's so hallowed is that when people talk about it they mean
> Dynamic
> Quality."

Well, Steve, if Freedom doesn't mean anything, then "the social-intellectual 
moral code which describes how societies have come to agree that the 
intellectual level should be free from social control", as you defined it 
for Platt, doesn't mean anything either.  You went on to say: "These 
'rights' have evolved and continue to evolve as societies come to better
understand how they can facilitate evolution towards DQ."   That's a 
convoluted way to describe Freedom, but are "rights" not the exercise of 
freedom in society?

I don't know about RMP, but when I talk about Freedom I'm definitely not 
referring to some esthetic realm called Dynamic Quality.  By Freedom I mean 
the autonomy of man whereby an individual can choose his/her values and act 
in accordance with his/her sensibility.

Victor Frankl said: "Everything can be taken from a man but ... the last of 
the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of 
circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Voltaire said: "So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, 
those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, 
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and 
otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."

Rudolf Steiner wrote: "Only one who is morally unfree, who obeys bodily 
instincts or conventional demands of duty, turns away from a fellow human 
being if the latter does not obey the same instincts and demands as 
himself."

I believe that man's freedom derives from his capacity to discriminate 
between values.  Such values may be esthetic, moral, or intellectual.  My 
argument for this is that the essence of man is value-sensibility.  Because 
his wants and aspirations extend beyond the biological need to survive, he 
is free to choose independently of instinct, laws, or physical coercion. 
Given the opportunity to fully exercise his innate freedom, man is the 
choicemaker of his universe.

Unless Freedom is overcoming enslavement, how is it "an escape from 
something negative"?

Thanks for the Pirsig quote, Steve.

Regards,
Ham