[MD] The Intellectual Gauntlet II !

[Ian Glendinning]

DMB, Arlo, Ron,

DMB suggested ...
"maybe these right-wing attitudes can serve to illustrate what social
level values look like in real life"

The meat:
I think this is absolutely correct, almost by definition ...
right-wing equates to "conservative" and the social level provides a
foundation and some static latches to conserve existing socialised
intellectual value, and allow new and dynamic intellectual level
freedoms.

The distraction:
Yet, the paradox I find with Platt - the internal inconsistency, which
confirms to me it is all just unthinking slogan-speak - is that he
subscribes to an MoQ where Level 4 is "above" Level 3 in evolved
patterns of quality .... yet he is shamelessly and quite explicitly
"anti-intellectual".

Ian

On 7/23/08, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Arlo said to Ron:
> ...make no mistake, they can run and hide and wrap themselves in cloaked language, but you nailed it when you wondered if that what Platt was really saying. Yes, Ron, it is. This is why it is NOT about "ranking cultures based on their intellectual openness or responsiveness to DQ". Hell, as you say everyone here is okay with that, certainly I am, but it is about placing _white American culture_ at the top. That's what they want. Not a ranking that may place America third in some regards, fifth in another, and maybe in first in some. Oh no, it has to be the unabashed orgasmic proclamation of Absolute Moral Supremacy of White American Culture. ...when the perennial nonsense about "evil multiculturalism and the commie academy" came up, coupled with the embarrassing stupidity of Ham's comment, I simply can't ignore it.
>
> dmb says:
> I also find it annoying and embarrassing but maybe these right-wing attitudes can serve to illustrate what social level values look like in real life. The concern for American culture and the english language, the fear of foriegners, the distaste for multiculturalism and the hatred of academia all go hand in hand. These are social level values, values that are concerned with the preservation of society above all, even to the extent of being anti-intellectual.
>
> Did you notice how the principle of freedom, to Platt's mind, is a divinely granted freedom, God's freedom? When this intellectual principle isn't converted to theology, it is converted to crude materialism, to free market capitalism, as if the human spirit yearned for the freedom to shop. And did you ever notice how its expressed in sound bites, cliches and plattitudes? Of course you have. Clearly, social level values aren't about making sense. Making sense only breeds resentment in that crowd.
>
> God, guns and gays. To put it in a bumper sticker, that's what the conservatives traditionally vote about. (They're for the first two and against the last one.) There is a whole constellation of values that go along with this pithy little list. The Republican Party's policies reflect the conservative value system pretty well and I think its pretty clear that it is almost entirely social and in practice the current batch has been profoundly anti-intellectual, disregarding the highest laws, censoring science, stacking the justice department with political hacks and disrespecting the truth in general. But I suppose they sincerely think they're protecting American society and culture too.
>
> There is a screenwriting principle that says the bad guy doesn't think he's a bad guy. From his point of view, he's doing what he has to do or even what's best and right. And you have to write that part, his actions and words, from that point of view. From his perspective, the bad guy is the hero of the story. And this is only natural because we're all heroines in our own stories. And in the bad guy's view, the hero is evil. And that's how it is with conservatives and liberals. Each side thinks the other is ruining everything that makes the country great. And that's what the social-intellectual conflict is like too. Politics is just the most conspicuous form of the social-intellectual conflict. Both sides genuinely feel threatened by the other, each wants their set of values to prevail. If the MOQ sorts this out in terms of levels, so we don't just have rival subjective opinions or the kind of relativism that amounts to cultural solipsism, then one side does have more weight
>  than the other and we can make the call. Naturally, conservatives will never believe it and will ignore whatever parts they need to, but I think its pretty darn obvious. Pirsig refers to himself as a liberal intellectual in Lila and uses FDR's New Deal as an example of the intellectual culture. He concedes some points to conservatives but adds that he's not one of them. Not that he would build an evolutionary hierarchy around his own views. He's talking about historical events most of the time, but its pretty clear how he understands those events. He's no prude. He's no hippie basher. And he's not an Ayn Rand fan either.
>
> But that's okay. Conservatives already have their metaphysics.
>
>
>
>
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