[MD] Another parallel

[X Acto]

another quote for the master of quotes

"Like the stuff Rigel was throwing at him this morning, the old Victorian morality. 
That was entirely within that one code — the social code. Phaedrus thought that code 
was good enough as far as it went, but it really didn't go anywhere. It didn't know 
its origins and it didn't know its own destinations, and not knowing them it had to 
be exactly what it was: hopelessly static, hopelessly stupid, a form of evil in itself.
Evil . . . If he'd called it that one-hundred-and-fifty years ago he might have gotten 
himself into some real trouble. People got mad back then when you challenged their 
social institutions, and they tended to take reprisals. He might have gotten himself 
ostracized as some kind of a social menace. And if he'd said it six-hundred years ago 
he might have been burned at the stake.
But today it's hardly a risk. It's more of a cheap shot. Everybody thinks those 
Victorian moral codes are stupid and evil, or old-fashioned at least, except maybe 
a few religious fundamentalists and ultra-right-wingers and ignorant uneducated 
people like that. That's why Rigel's sermon this morning seemed so peculiar. Usually 
people like Rigel do their sermonizing in favor of whatever they know is popular. 
That way they're safe. Didn't he know all that stuff went out years ago? Where was 
he during the revolution of the sixties?
Where has he been during this whole century? "
-Lila -get off your duff and find it




________________________________
From: Platt Holden <plattholden at gmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2009 7:55:56 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Another parallel

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:

> [DMB]
> This is one more reason I feel so lucky to live in Denver.
>
> [Arlo]
> I love Denver. When/if I ever decide to live "urban" again, Denver is where
> I'm a'heading. I think the description you give in your post exemplifies the
> non-distinction between "art" and the daily activity of our lives. When we
> cease making this one artificial distinction, I think a lot of other things
> will fall into place. We should rescue the word "craft" from its association
> with quaint, cliched, antique goods and return it to its rightful place as a
> verb to describe this form of high-quality activity.
>
> "Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his
> expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and
> you'll see the difference. The craftsman isn't ever following a single line
> of instruction. He's making decisions as he goes along. For that reason
> he'll be absorbed and attentive to what he's doing even though he doesn't
> deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are in a kind of
> harmony. He isn't following any set of written instructions because the
> nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which
> simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand. The material and
> his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his
> mind's at rest at the same time the material's right."
>
> "Sounds like art," the instructor says.
>
> "Well, it is art," I say." (ZMM)
>
> What intrigues me about this Pirsig quote is that his initial distinction
> refers to "labor" (novice workman/craftsman) and sets the stage for "art" to
> be freed from its binding association with extra-curricular, superfluous,
> paint-music-sculpt-dance-etc prison. This is a little off-topic, but I do
> think that Early Hippie Thinking got this right.
>
>
>
[Platt]
Pirsig describes a time when craftsmanship (and other virtues) were valued:

"What we tend to forget is that, unlike the European aristocrats they aped,
the American Victorians were a very creative people. The telephone, the
telegraph, the rail road, the transatlantic cable, the light bulb, the
radio, the phonograph, the motion pictures, and the techniques of mass
production—almost all the great technological changes that are associated
with the twentieth century are, in fact, American *Victorian* inventions.
This *city is composed* of their value patterns! It was their optimism,
their belief in the future, their codes of craftsmanship and labor and
thrift and self-discipline that really built twentieth-century America.
Since the Victorians disappeared the entire drift of this century has been
toward a dissipation of these values. (Lila, 17)

Good to see Arlo wanting to restore Victorian "codes of craftsmanship." I
wonder, though, what "Early Hippie Thinking." Does  that have any relation
to the current Democratic party agenda?
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/