[MD] Catching up to Pirsig

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt --



> I have probably missed the point of your questions since it
> seems obvious to me and probably to you that we as
> human beings currently living in the West are much better off
> than we were, say, in the Middle Ages or, going back even
> further, when we were painting symbols of antelope in the caves
> of Lascaux.  As for the obvious "better offness" of morality,
> we no longer live in a world where might makes right but in a
> world of laws protecting individual rights to be free of social
> (government) oppression -- rights that as you know are now
> being threatened by Obamamania. Unfortunately the path to
> betterness (individual liberty/personal responsibility) is never
> without reversals and setbacks such as we are witnessing today.

I guess I've narrowed down my "mission" here to a single purpose: persuading 
the MoQers that value and morality start with the individual subject.  The 
problem with you folks -- and that includes you, Platt -- is that Pirsig has 
rejected subjectivity and you are all trying to get around it by impugning 
value to the insentient universe.  This won't work epistemologically, 
metaphysically, or as a morality system.

This isn't a political mission -- heaven knows we've been beating that to 
death for years.  Rather, it's the principle that value sensibility is 
proprietary to the individual, not an attribute of the universe.  Value is 
perceived differentially by the human being (organism) which 
intellectualizes (rationalizes) it as an "esthetic/moral spectrum" from 
goodness or excellence to evil or banality.  What we experience are 
objectivized manifestations of these values, and morality represents an 
effort to ensure that human society survives and flourishes in the same way 
that biological instincts assure the survival of non-valuistic life forms.

I believe that Mr. Pirsig was aiming for the same objective when decided to 
make LILA "An Inquiry into Morals".  What muddied the waters was his refusal 
to acknowledge subjective awareness as the locus of value, replacing it with 
an evolutionary system of levels and patterns which, in effect, turns 
process and relations into "static" phenomena.

Back in the '50s, I was intrigued by a small paperback in which a biologist 
outlined a moralistic philosophy based on attraction and desire.  As a 
social moralist, you may find his line of reasoning of interest:

"How much more certain a man is to do right if he not only knows what it is 
but WANTS to do it!  This want guards him far more strongly against wrong 
than does the enforcement of his loyalty by law or obligation.  A stong 
desire, a goal he seeks, is more powerful in the end than these.  The lesson 
we must learn is that the only sure way to make man moral is through his 
motives, to make him WANT to do the things he OUGHT to do.  The means to 
save society may be as simple--and as difficult--as that.  What makes us do 
evil is that evil, for one reason or another, attracts us more rthan good 
does.  Not until virtue is attractive FOR ITS OWN SAKE will men cleave 
always to it.  Our motive, our emotions, our MOVINGS must be elevated if 
life is to reach a higher moral plane.  Many reformers think that emotions 
are a hindrance to man's attainment of the ideal society, and look forward 
to the day when reason only, unclouded by feeling, will guide his conduct. 
That day will never come, for emotion gives the motive power for behavior. 
...Science can help develop techniques by which the good life can be found, 
but we shall never attain to it unless we earnestly DESIRE to do so."
        -- Edmund W. Sinnott: "The Biology of the Spirit" (1957)

For all I know, Dr. Sinnott's little book may have sparked my interest in 
human value.  (I no longer remember.)  However, if you compare this simple 
concept with Pirsig's non-subjective, non-emotional, levels-driven universe, 
you may understand the reason for my discontent.

Essentially yours,
Ham