[MD] Intellect Worship

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt]
Anti-intellectualism as a moral movement? 

[Arlo]
I think you could make the argument that the the Hippie movement should have
"transcended" intellectualism, instead many sought to destroy it AND social
patterns, leading to the placing biological patterns atop their way of life.
This is when/where the Hippies lost their moral path.

[Platt]
Yet elsewhere Pirsig described Nazism as anti-intellectual. But, then again he
says American intellectuals really screwed up:

[Arlo]
"Anti-intellectualism" is the view that social patterns should dominate
intellectual patterns. This is not to say that all critiques of particular
intellectual patterns are "anti-intellectual".

While Pirsig bemoaned the "fault" in Western intellectual patterns, he also
wrote a metaphysics that places intellect firmly above social patterns. His
critiques, then, were not that intellect should be subordinate, but that some
intellectual patterns are not as good as they should be. Big difference.

[Platt]
No matter what stance you stake, it appears intellect can be as morally
mistaken as some of the old social codes. So I think you have a point. 

[Arlo]
Of course it can. And I would argue that "intellect" has a much greater
built-in "fallacy meter" than social patterns. But can/does it get "stuck" and
does this create problems? Again, of course.

My point is that the solution is, ultimately, transcendence, not subversion to
the rule of social patterns.