[MD] Another parallel

[david buchanan]

Ron and all MOQers:
The quotes you dished up from chapter 21 lead into the wider political discussion in chapter 22, where the history of the 20th century is described as a social hurricane, as a time of evolutionary transformation revolving around the conflict between social and intellectual values. Chapter 21 says, "the Victorians were the last people to believe that patterns of intellect are subordinate to patterns of society while chapter 22 says, "communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over society, were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the social control of intellect". Chapter 21 says, "the essence of the Victorian value pattern was an elevation of society above everything else" and chapter 22 says, "this conflict explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane search for power but as an all-consuming glorification of social authority and hatred of intellectualism". Add this to the idea that we've been drifting backward in recent decades under the leadership of the "neo-Victorians", which I take to be a euphemism meaning "reactionaries". 
In the USA, "the social upheaval was not so great as in Europe, but FDR and the New Deal, nevertheless, became the center of a lesser storm between social and intellectual forces". It says, "Intellectualism, which had been a respected servant of the Victorian society, had become society's master" and "it should be stated at this point that the MOQ SUPPORTS this dominance of intellect over society" (Emphasis is Pirsig's). Pirsig then goes on to talk about the problem of SOM. He says, "science, the intellectual pattern that has been appointed to take over society, has a defect in it". This critique of the intellect is elsewhere applied to both capitalists and socialists, to political economics in general, but the basic hierarchy remains the same. The conflict between social and intellectual values still rages. You can read about in any newspaper, seven days a week, and I think this kind of diagnosis can really help to sort things out. 
I mean, who would disagree with the interpretation that says the MOQ advocates intellectual control of society rather than the reverse? And isn't it fair to say that the political right defends social level values while the political left is identified with the intellectual level. (With right and left being relative to the politics of the various nations involved.) Would anyone disagree with that? Besides, Platt, I mean? There are only so many way to interpret these passages, right. Interpretations that defy this basic scheme aren't likely to be correct, wouldn't you say? Isn't that just what a fair and honest reader sees here? I'd probably really enjoy a political discussion that uses the MOQ's analysis but it's always so contentious. It gets spun this way and that, so much that these basic categories get lost and confused right away. It's a dern shame. That's right, I said "dern".
Thanks.





Ron provided more quotes for Platt: 
>  
> "What distinguishes the Victorian culture from the culture of today is
>  that the Victorians were the last people to believe that patterns of 
> intellect are subordinate to patterns of society. What held the Victorian
>  pattern together was a social code, not an intellectual one. They called 
> it morals, but really it was just a social code. As a code it was just like 
> their ornamental cast-iron furniture: expensive looking, cheaply made, brittle, 
> cold and uncomfortable."
> 
> "If one realizes that the essence of the Victorian value pattern was an elevation 
> of society above everything
> else, then all sorts of things fall into place. What we today call Victorian 
> hypocrisy was not regarded as hypocrisy. It was a virtuous effort to keep one's 
> thoughts within the limits of social propriety. In the Victorian's mind quality 
> and intellectuality were not related to one another in such a way that quality 
> had to stand the test of intellectual meaning. The test of anything in the 
> Victorian mind was, 'Does society approve?'"
> 
> "All this explains why Victorian robber barons in America aped European aristocracy 
> in ways that seem so ludicrous to us today. It explains why it was so fashionable 
> for Victorian nabobs to pay large sums to be included in biographies of 'distinguished
>  citizens.' It explains why Victorians so despised the frontier part of the American 
> personality and went to ridiculous extremes to conceal it. They wanted to strike it 
> from their history, conceal it in every way possible.
> It explains why the Victorians were so vehement in their loathing of Indians. The 
> statement, The only good Indian is a dead Indian,' was a Victorian statement. The 
> idea of extermination of all Indians was not common before the nineteenth century.
>  Victorians wanted to destroy 'inferior' societies because inferior societies were 
> a form of evil. Colonialism, which before that time was an economic opportunity, 
> became with Victorians a moral course, a 'white man's burden' to spread their social 
> patterns and thus virtue throughout the world.
> Truth, knowledge, beauty, all the ideals of mankind, are passed on from generation 
> to generation like a flaming torch, the headmaster said, which each generation must 
> hold up high and protect with their very lives lest that torch go out. But what he 
> meant by that torch was a static Victorian social value pattern. And what he either 
> did not know, or found it convenient to ignore, was that the torch of Victorian 
> romantic idealism had gone out long before he spoke those words in the 1930s. Perhaps 
> he was just trying to relight it.
> 
> But there is no way to light that torch within a Victorian pattern of values. Once 
> intellect has been let out of the bottle of social restraint, it is almost impossible
>  to put it back in again. And it is immoral to try. A society that tries to restrain 
> the truth for its own purposes is a lower form of evolution than a truth that restrains
>  society for its own purposes.
> 
> Victorians repressed the truth whenever it seemed socially unacceptable, just as they 
> repressed thoughts about the powdery horse manure dust that floated about them as they 
> drove their carriages through this city. They knew it was there. They breathed it in 
> and out. But they didn't consider it socially proper to talk about it. To speak plainly 
> and openly was vulgar. They never did so unless forced by extreme social circumstances 
> because vulgarity was a form of evil.
> Because it was evil to speak the truth openly, their apparatus for social self-correction
>  became atrophied and paralyzed."
> 
> "Ultimately their minds became the same way. Their language became filled with ornamental 
> curlicues that never stopped proliferating until it was all but incomprehensible. And if
>  you didn't understand it you dared not show it because to show it meant you were vulgar 
> and ill-bred."
> 
> "With Victorian spirits atrophied and their minds hemmed in by social restraints, all 
> avenues to any quality other than social quality were closed. And so this social base 
> which had no intellectual meaning and no biological purpose slowly and helplessly 
> drifted toward its own stupid self-destruction: toward the senseless murder of millions
>  of its own children on the battlefields of the First World War."-lila ch21
> 

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