[MD] philosophy and education

[gav]

hiya,
i guess our respective takes are not mutually exclusive, rather they are complementary.
i am not talking about abandoning technology. i am talking about empowering the individual. it is lot more work to deprogram an adult than not fuck up a child in the first place.
but i am not saying abandon adults either!!! the work is worth doing...there is no other work *more* worth doing...hence zeitgeist addendum, la belle verte...and of course pirsig is a big puzzle piece: pirsig, ant, yourself, this list.
alles klar?
g



--- On Tue, 4/8/09, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [MD] philosophy and education
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Received: Tuesday, 4 August, 2009, 10:01 AM
> 
> Gav said:
> ...and of course it is not just education that suffers this
> treatment. but as dave said: got to go to the roots - no use
> holding on to something which is terminally ill. ...and this
> is where i perhaps deviate from pirsig and dave (oh my
> god!), at least a little. i do think that change will occur
> at the academic level, but it will be slow. people like ant
> and dave are pioneers here. but this isn't the root; these
> are the topmost branches.
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> 
> I don't think the system or rather the rationality behind
> it is terminally ill and there's reason to hope, even in the
> academic world. I mean, it's worth pressing the idea again
> that the MOQ is not opposed to rationality or intellect per
> se. It has a genetic defect in it, as Pirsig puts it, and
> that's why he goes all the way back to the ancients to
> locate the source of the problem but the idea is to repair
> the defect in those old forms of thought. 
> >From ZAMM, near the end of chapter 14:
> "Well, it isn't just art and technology. It's a kind of a
> noncoalescence between reason and feeling. What's wrong with
> technology is that it's not connected in any real way with
> matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does
> blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for
> that. People haven't paid much attention to this before
> because the big concern has been with food, clothing and
> shelter for everyone and technology has provided these."But
> now where these are assured, the ugliness is being noticed
> more and more and people are asking if we must always suffer
> spiritually and esthetically in order to satisfy material
> needs. Lately it's become almost a national
> crisis...antipollution drives, antitechnological communes
> and styles of life, and all that."Both DeWeese and Gennie
> have understood all this for so long there's no need for
> comment, so I add, "What's emerging from the pattern of my
> own life is the belief that the crisis is being caused by
> the inadequacy o
>  f existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It
> can't be solved by rational means because the rationality
> itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're
> solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning
> `square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone.
> Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them.
> And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what
> I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't
> that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature
> of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a
> solution."
> 
> dmb continues:
> 
> In fact, if the task is to expand rationality, I don't see
> why one couldn't introduce that expanded rationality into
> the academic world. It's hard to imagine a better place to
> introduce such a thing. I tried to present it at the
> skateboard park and at some birthday parties but somehow
> that seemed inappropriate.  One kid at the party
> pointed out that philosophers do blind, ugly things (Kant's
> aesthetics was his example) and then he popped my balloon.
> The kid at the skateboard park flicked a lit cigarette at
> me. Said I was in his way. Said he was trying to get some
> exercise and that I should take up the peripatetic method of
> contemplation. When I tried to explain the urgency of the
> need for an expanded rationality, he grabbed his crotch and
> said, "expand this, pal". That squirrel definitely got
> around me. 
> 
> 
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