[MD] Shouldn?t we be, like, revolting ?

[Platt Holden]

Hi Bo,>  

> According to Pirsig communism is an intellectual pattern, that much I 
> remember, but where does he place capitalism (I don't have LILA 
> here) I don't think at the social?

The MOQ sanctions the morality of social level capitalism, as explained by 
the following:

"The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes everybody richer-by 
preventing static economic patterns from setting in and stagnating economic 
growth. That is the reason the major capitalist economies of the world have 
done so much better since World War II than the major socialist economies. 
It is not that Victorian social economic patterns are more moral than 
socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite. They are less 
moral as static patterns go. What makes the free-enterprise system superior 
is that the socialists, reasoning intelligently and objectively, have 
inadvertently closed the door to Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling 
of things. They closed it because the metaphysical structure of their 
objectivity never told them Dynamic Quality exists." (Lila, 17)

>OK, I could go on 
> for ever about this, the gist is that all countries are social patterns,
> but 
> some are overlaid with intellectual values as in the Western World.       

Right. The "overlay" of intellectual values is the demand for freedom from 
social level conformity, intimidation and coercion, e.g., freedom from 
political correctness : 

"It says that what is meant by "human rights" is usually the moral code of 
intellect-vs.-society, the moral right of intellect to be free of social 
control. Freedom of speech; freedom of assembly, of travel; trial by jury; 
habeas corpus; government by consent-these "human rights" are all intellect-
vs.-society issues. According to the Metaphysics of Quality these "human 
rights" have not just a sentimental basis, but a rational, metaphysical 
basis. They are essential to the evolution of a higher level of life from a 
lower level of life. They are for real." (Lila, 24) 

Platt