[MD] Another parallel

[Platt Holden]

Also intellectual values in this case refers to the scientific view of life
which has a defect in it: no provision for morals. Result: "Sometime after
the twenties a secret loneliness, so penetrating and so encompassing that we
are only beginning to realize the extent of it, descended upon the land.
This scientific, psychiatric isolation and futility had become a far
*worse*prison of the spirit than the old Victorian "virtue" ever was."
(Lila, 22)

Platt



On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 5:50 PM, X Acto <xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:

> 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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