[MD] Democracy

[Platt Holden]

Hi Chris, 

[Platt previously] 
> > Two problems with relying on intellectual level rationality.1) Reason 
> > alone
> > (SOM) doesn't provide a basis for moral judgments. 2)  "So convenient it
> > is
> > to be a rational creature, since it enables us to find or make a reason
> > for
> > everything one has a mind to do."  -- Benjamin Franklin. Obviously 1 and
> 2
> > are related. Example: In the current presidential contest there is no
> lack
> > of reasons on either side to cast one's vote.

[Chris]
> You have a point. However, Intellectual level rationality, or, what that
> is 
> aimed at - Truth - is evolutionary superior to social-level values. 
> Rationality, as one method aiming towards truth, but not the only one,  is
> still better to have as the guiding principle of society rather than
> social 
> values like patriotism or stuff like that.  The best thing we can do then,
> would be to try to build a society where people can value truth. And I say
> "can" because people must to some degree be freed from social level 
> dominance in order for intellectual valuing to be supreme - that's what we
> should build for. Just as the social level made it easier to get away from
> only biological values, it strengthened it's position, in the same way the
> intellectual level must build on and reform the social level in order to
> make truth more valued.
> 
> Do I make sense?

You make a lot of sense if one accepts the premises that 1) there is such a 
thing as "the truth," and 2) people must be freed from social level 
dominance in order to value intellectual patterns. Regarding 1) it's a 
dubious proposition that we can know "the truth" or that SOM intellect is 
the only way to find it. (See what Pirsig says about mystic understanding 
in Lila.) Regarding 2) many spokesmen for the value of intellect (freedom 
of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to own property, etc) suffered 
under the most stringent social level patterns of conformity imaginable.  
Examples are many: Gandhi, King, Mandela, Solzhenitsyn to mention a few of 
the most prominent in recent history. Finally, in your brief political 
history of Sweden, the social democrats built what you would call the ideal 
society only to be voted out when it became apparent that they couldn't 
respond to a changing world. Pirsig had an explanation for this lack of 
flexibility. "But what the socialists left out and what has all but killed 
their whole undertaking is an absence of a concept of indefinite Dynamic 
Quality." (Lila, 17)

So what we should build is a society whereby there is separation of the 
economy and the state, just as the separation of church and state. That 
way, DQ will be served. 

Platt