[MD] Another parallel

[X Acto]

Dave, John,
 I think it helps the discusion to specify that the term "intellectual values" in this case
refers to objectivism and it's values. Intellectual objective values vs. intellectual victorian social values. which dominated the intellectual level. Objectivism was victorian societies
servant, the servant of intellectual patterns that placed social values at the pinnacle 
of importance.
-Ron





________________________________
From: david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2009 1:46:56 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Another parallel


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? The subordination of intellectual values to social patterns, according to the MOQ, is immoral. As you saw in the quotes from Ron and me, this immoral subordination is exactly what the Victorians, the fascists and the neo-Victorians all have in common. If there is going to be any kind of fair and intelligent discussion of politics from the MOQ's perspective, this is the basic scheme that can't be defied. That's why I've never understood why anyone on the political right would be attracted to the MOQ. With some qualifications, it concedes a couple of points to conservatism but overall the MOQ does not rank it highly nor does it flatter conservative causes.

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. This conflict between social and intellectual values has driven our politics for about 90 years so that a guy could name names all day long. There are always going to be exceptions to the rule but, 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. 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. 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. 
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.

dmb quoted some more stuff:

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).


John replied:

You just gave me an idea Dave, about the reason the social upheaval was not so great in America - there were other social movements and cultural values at play in the national character - the native values that Pirsig describes so eloquently in Lila - America mocked victorian values.  From one side of it's brain anyway.  What I'd call it's redneck side today.  Beer swillin', Bush votin', church goin', americans.  Who think Norman Rockwell is cool, deep down in their hearts.


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.

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. He's going to talk about the founding fathers with reverence and eat apple pie at baseball games with his mother. He's going to see himself as a defender of traditional morality while serving the interests of the economic elite. In short, fascism has a slightly different inflection wherever it arises precisely because it reasserts the
 social values of the society in which it exists, but it is always built on the backs of the "rednecks" who are willing to serve the interests of capital. In fact Mussolini, the inventor of fascism, said that it should really be called "Corporatism", which is when large financial interests run the government. To the extent that corporations and their lobbyists run this country, that describes us. Sadly, most people think fascism means genocide and crazy theories about racial purity. People expect they'll recognize fascism by it's German accent or the way it goose-steps down the street. 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.

dmb said:

... who would disagree with the interpretation that says the MOQ advocates intellectual control of society rather than the reverse?

John replied:

It sounds ok, depending on who your intellectuals are - which always devolves into a political battle and we're back in the realm of the social again.

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. From what I could gather, McIntyre was smart enough to make a case against democracy and for traditional christian morality in a quasi-academic book. There are conservative think tanks that pretend or genuinely try to be intellectually respectable and yet, for the most part, they are defending tradition at the expense of intellectual values. One can see this in the names of think tanks like, "The Heritage Foundation" and "The American Enterprise Institute", for example. The celebrator of the little red schoolhouse is a "scholar" with "The Hoover Institute" was named after the hero of the anti-FDR crowd and is
 headquartered at Stanford, one of the nations's most conservative Universities. You know, "All In The Family" opens each episode with Archie and Edith singing, "we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again". Late last year, when the economy began to implode, people were saying Bush was a lot like Hoover. I mean, if we don't confuse intellectual presentations with the actual content or the actual values being presented maybe we can avoid that devolution.


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?" 

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. 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. 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.




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