[MD] Another parallel

[John Carl]

On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 10:46 AM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> dmb quoted chapter 22 of Lila, which 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".
>
> John replied:
>
> What is the problem with intellectualism?  It's too dynamic.  Societies,
> like egos, get comfortable in "their" patterns and despise dynamic change
> which upsets working social patterns.
>
> dmb says:
>
> Not to be snarky, but aren't you defending social level values at the
> expense of intellectual values?



You can be snarky with me anytime, big boy.  I like it.  I wasn't clear.
 You can especially be snarky if it's my fault.  I should have said, "What
is the problem society has with intellectualism?"   I agree completely that
it's an immoral response of society, but when something or somebody does
something immoral, I want to know why.  I was analyzing why society commits
the immorality of repressing intellectualism.  I mean, on the surface,
intellectual advancement is a good thing for society, right?



>
> John said:
>
> By neo-victorians I assume you mean the bush gang, but I think you are
> doing a serious disservice to the victorians.  The victorians had a
> too-stiff morality but the bozos who've been in power got no morality at all
> except the Texas Cattle Baron brand -
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> The Bush gang would definitely count but I'd guess that about half the
> country could be counted as neo-Victorian.


Nah, half the country are reactionary neo victorian cattle and the bush gang
was an outfit of cowpokes out to rustle up some meaty profit, then retreat
to their comfortable front porch rocking chairs and chuckle at the dems
dealing with the cowflop.

Wake up and smell the truth Dave.


This conflict between social and intellectual values has driven our politics
> for about 90 years


Huh?  It's an eternal conflict, so what aspect are you referring to?



> I think, it would be a truthful and useful generalization to say that
> anyone whose registered as a Republican or regularly attends a
> fundamentalist church is a neo-Victorian.


I disagree with you on the truth or usefulness of such a generalization.  If
you change your "or" to "both" I'll give it to you just cuz I'm in a nice
mood,  except for the exceptions I named above which are the manipulators OF
social patterns and thus do not really fall INTO the social patterns - the
herders vs. the cattle.




> Why? Because they're extremely likely to defend social level values at the
> expense of intellectual values. Again, this is just the basic social vs.
> intellectual scheme, the bare bones of the MOQ's political analysis.


Yeah but don't make it sound like such a simple thing simply because you've
got it figured out in your head.  That line between social level and
intellectual level values can be such a tricky bastard at times.  Most often
they coincide.  It's only when they conflict in people that we notice the
conflict, and once you enter the stage of conflict and competition for
ideas, you are in the realm of social conflict - politics, religion, -
they're all about ideas, but when men hold these ideas they become social
forces of conflict.  They divide up into schools of thought.  They don't
think "about" what they are defending any more.




> Bush calls himself a born-again christian, painted international relations
> in stark terms of good and evil, said Jesus Christ was his favorite
> philosopher (a comment mocked by Pirsig in a print interview), suppressed
> all kinds of scientific information, and implemented a whole series of
> policies that seriously disrespected international and constitutional human
> rights laws. As far as American reactionaries go, Bush is among the worst.


hey, what can I tell you.  I always vote for Nader, except I voted for Gore
when he ran against Bush.  Sometimes evil wins.  Who could predict putting
unseen pressure on the Supreme Court?  At the time we Californians were just
sweating out the exponential increase in electricity needed to run our
silicon valley halls of power and wondering who all these texas energy
companies holding the rights to the waterin' hole were.  Enron?  What's
that?

Not that I think Jesus was a bad philosopher, international relations should
be conducted in a neutral way or science is god.  I just think Bush used the
hot buttons of the people.  The hot button being connected to a cattle prod
that moved them the direction of power and profit to himself - or rather,
his controller handlers.  The only reason he got away with all he
accomplished was how reassuringly stupid he seemed.  Obviously he didn't
have a nefarious agenda, he was too dumb.  Meanwhile Cheney, according to
insider reports, would cackle over his briefings designed to get the great
decider to go exactly where told.  I'll grant neo victorian cowdom to W as
well, I guess.  But it was the gang running the show that caused the real
problems.

Not that there are any real problems.  Now that California can print its own
money, we can just keep on spending to our heart's content with no budgeting
needed.  Yay us.


>
> To be a Victorian in 1880 was just normal. To be a Victorian in 1980
> (Thinking of Reagan) is reactionary. It was reactionary in the 1930s too,
> when fascism was coming to power in Europe and that old school master was
> trying to re-light that Victorian torch. In that sense, I agree that
> equating today's reactionaries to yesterday's Victorians is a little unfair
> to the latter. Same thing with today's fundamentalists. To call them
> medieval is a little unfair to the people who lived in the middle ages. Back
> then, nobody had to deny well-established scientific truths in order to
> maintain their religious beliefs.
>

Well there is a place where we really differ.  I see scientific truths as
religious beliefs and the idea that they are "well established" reeking of
SOMish misunderstanding.  But I doubt anything useful could be contributed
on my part after all the Krimelization that has crystalized already.   But
being a reactionary is probably quite a common occurence because of this
aspect of change which intellectual advancement brings.  Somebody somewhere
in society pays a price when society-wide change occurs, and its this
reaction which defines reactionary, I'd guess.



> dmb says:
>
> Well, I'd say the storm was less intense in the USA simply because WW I and
> the Russian revolution happened on European soil and so most of the millions
> who died were Europeans. Besides that, all of the fascist movements that
> emerged in Europe after the Great War relied quite heavily on their own
> particular brand of redneck. In each case, (in Italy, Spain and Germany)
> fascism existed as an alliance between the economic elites and the
> uneducated mob. Franco, Mussolini and Hitler all came to power with the help
> of young thugs who were drunk with patriotism and saw themselves as the
> defenders traditional morality.



Does strike  a strong resemblance to joe six pack contractors and plumbers
in their pickups with the W brand on their ass end.



> This is the thing that makes fascism so hard to detect in one's own back
> yard. Since it is essentially a vigorous, muscular reassertion of the
> traditional social values, it seems so normal and comfortable. I mean, when
> fascism emerges in Germany it is going to be very, very German. Naturally,
> it's going to sound real good to a German right away. When it appears in
> Italy it is going to be super, super Italian and so Italians are going love
> it. Same thing in Spain or anywhere else. In the USA, fascism is going to be
> very, very American. The American fascist is going fly his flag, love his
> country and think it the greatest.



Ok here's something that really, really bugged me, and it may seem like a
digression but I don't think it is.  After 9/11 I saw hundreds of these
american flag bumper stickers for sale everywhere and on the bumpers and all
over the place.  They all looked the same pretty much, with this waving
american flag that was  a little longer than the proper proportions with
FOLDS in it.  If it'd been straightened out it would have been hideous.  Not
a flag at all, but a banner.  The american banner.   We don't do banners in
this country.  We do flags.  China does banners.  Whoever signed off on the
design back in China, cuz that's of course where they were made, figured it
seemed fine and thus the patriotic american is proudly displaying his made
in china banner on every single surface he can imagine it might look good.

But it doesn't look good.  It looks stupid.  Just as stupid as the federal
government going into high gear and requiring all nail clippers to be
confiscated in the biggest case of slamming the barn door shut after the
cows have escaped that history has ever witnessed.

So no, it's not a digression, its agreement.   The fears you express over
the similarity in the rise of fascism in Europe and the way the country is
going now are good points.

D]

 . But, as I like to say, when fascism comes to America it'll talk like a
cowboy and swagger down the street like John Wayne. He won't be wearing a
swastika but he'll probably be wearing one of those little flag pins on his
lapel. And he'll accuse those who don't wear one of being insufficiently
patriotic.

J]

Well all I say is it better be aesthetically pleasing or I won't wear one.
 Even if you shoot me.  No death is worse than fashion death.

dmb says:
>
> Well, it's not so much about identifying the right intellectuals so much as
> intellectual values themselves. There are professional people who can make
> an intellectual argument in favor of social level values but they are still
> defending social level values. One can be intellectually skilled and use
> those skills for anti-intellectual causes.



See what I mean about complicated??




> dmb said:
>
> ... isn't it fair to say that the political right defends social level
> values while the political left is identified with the intellectual level?
>
> John said:
>
> See?  I told you.  You've got a political argument on your hands just from
> posing the solution that the left has all the intellectuals.  Sure it does,
> but it's those same intellectuals that bug the hell out of the other half of
> the country and how do you propose to make them listen? I believe it is
> possible, but intellectual governance has to come about on the basis of
> individual choice.
>
> dmb says:
>
> Well, I was just hoping to have a fair and honest discussion here in this
> little forum. The problem of trying to make half the country listen will
> have to wait for another day. Heck, it might even take an entire weekend to
> change the minds of 60 million voters. Just getting something going in this
> little forum might be more than I can handle. The main point in posting all
> those quotes about the conflict of levels was to show that it is the MOQ
> that's "posing the solution that the left" defends intellectual values. My
> personal political attitudes might agree with the MOQ's analysis but I'm
> trying to show what the MOQ says, not what I think. Was my comment (above)
> anything other than a paraphrase of the Pirsig quotes they were attached to?
> Pirsig describes communism, socialism and the New Deal as "programs for
> intellectual control over society" and he describes fascism as "a program
> for the social control of intellect" just like the Victorians and
> neo-Victorian would have it. Is there a way to read these quotes so that it
> is UNFAIR to say, "the political right defends social level values while the
> political left is identified with the intellectual level?"
>

Yes, there is a way.


> See, I'm trying to get people to park their ideologies at the door and take
> an honest look at what Pirsig is saying about politics.


That's tough to do, you know.  The best way is usually lead by example ...



> And here you're basically implying that a simple paraphrase of clear and
> explicit quotes is somehow biased. You're implying that I'm "posing the
> solution" as if those quotes weren't really Pirsig's words.



No-o-o... I'm implying that your pose of a solution  carries your agenda -
lefty bad, righty good.  It's too bald and self serving to be persuasive.
 It creates a reaction that makes reactionaries react more.  You do have a
bias and owning that is the part of know thyself that is more persuasive
than repeating smart lefty, dumb righty, all day long till you're blue in
the face.

But I get you Dave.  You're a problem solver, not a problem reiterator and
I'm on your side.

Don't let it go to your head.  I'm on everybody's side.





> That sort of thing makes me a little crazy. I think to myself, does their
> copy of Lila differ from mine? Do the words get scrambled somewhere between
> my keyboard and their mail box? Are the quotes written in an invisible font?
> At the risk of belaboring the obvious, isn't Pirsig's scheme completely
> simple and, um, obvious? It's all expressed quite explicitly, without jargon
> and with tons of historical examples. I can see how a conservative person
> wouldn't LIKE it, but I really don't see how a fair or honest person can
> dispute what Pirsig said or the fact that he said it.




But there are parts I see that are just as big and meaningful to me.  Where
he describes the necessity for a driving force in evolution, for instance.
 That was so important to me and yet you don't seem to get that part at all
- you think Quality is an axes, not a direction.  But it was so plain!  In
clear and easy to understand words!

We all bring our own conceptual schema to our  interpretation of data.

Ok??

That's the limitation of Pragmatists, they don't realize this.  They're like
a logger who never saw or heard of anything but a plain cross cut saw coming
across a chainsaw, fully gassed up, in the woods and trys to cut a tree with
it.  All his experiential data will tell him is that this thing does cut
trees, but in a much more awkward manner than his old saw and thus the truth
is, his pragmatic philosophy KNOWS that his old saw is better.

But you know that old saw, we do get attached.

J




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-- 
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There are differing interpretations of Reality, some are just better than
others, that's all.
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