[MD] Another parallel

[david buchanan]

John said:
I am tempted to start a new thread, "Did Hitler Have Quality?"

dmb says:

In chapter 22 of Lila you'll find Pirsig's answer to that question. According to the MOQ, Hitler was driven by "an all-consuming glorification of social authority and hatred of intellectualism". "Nowhere did the old order become more intent on finding ways to destroy the excess of the new intellectualism." I think Hitler's hatred of and destruction of modern art is perfectly consistent with the MOQ's analysis. 


John said:

I read an interview a while back with some female comic artist of avant garde reputation.  Her work was  insightful  but coming from a dark place of sexual and physical abuse.  She was asked what comics most inspired her in her formative years.  Her answer "Family Circus" shocked me because I've always despised that stoopid little panelized morality lesson for the very reasons you elucidate.   But she explained that with her background  of childhood chaos, the most soothing and comforting art for her was that which assured her of normal family values in the world.

dmb says:

Psychologically, that makes a lot of sense. People who comes from a dysfunctional family situations are very likely to be attracted to "family values" simply because that's what they lack, what they need. The pain and suffering caused by such a chaotic, abusive situation is then projected onto society at large. It's an interesting demographic fact that the social pathologies that destroy families - cheating, abuse, divorce and such - are more common among the very groups who are most closely associated with the promotion of "family values". Likewise, it's no accident that some the most strident critics of Bill Clinton's infidelity have since been scandalized themselves for doing exactly what they had so vocally condemned. You know, we always hate in others what we fear in ourselves. It's called projection.    



John said:But  here is what happens when society evolves into  such a permanent and all-pervasive questioning of traditional values  that there are no traditional values left, we experience a backlash reaction that is worse than the stultifying traditional values you were initially escaping. Nazism was a reaction to Berlin's Cabaret.


dmb says:

If you mean that intellectual excesses are at least partly responsible for of the rise of reactionary movements like fascism and fundamentalism, I'd agree. Pirsig's critique of amoral, scientific materialism is very helpful in this regard. His aim of creating a new, spiritual rationality would reform intellectual values in such a way that there'd be less of a tendency to engender that kind of extreme reaction. I mean, despite the problems with intellectual values, it is still a higher form of evolution. These things simply can't be solved by anti-intellectualism or the glorification of social level values. And in the MOQ, that reactionary solution is immoral. Today's conservatives are what Pirsig calls "Neo-Victorians" and they're trying to take us back to the last static latch, back to social level values. This is a form of degeneracy far worse than getting a boner at the cabaret, don't you think?








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