[MD] Problems with the Academic Approach

[david buchanan]

Horse said to Platt:


Your Pirsig quote comes from that part of Lila's Child where you are supporting Bo's (now) SOL idea and Pirsig disagrees with you about the MoQ being a SOM document based on SOM reasoning:  ... Pirsig's notes 129, 131 and 133 also specifically disagree with Bo's idea about SOM as the Intellectual level - for which you show agreement.  Why is it that when Pirsig states quite categorically that both you and Bo are wrong about SOL - even going so far as to say that your conclusions undermine the MoQ - you ignore everything he says.




dmb says:


Those undermining conclusions are the same now as they were then, which means they haven't changed since the late 1990's at least. Man, that's a long time to be wrong about something, especially since they've both been actively engaged in discussing it the whole time. Man, talk about swishing around old tea. I mean, there's static quality and then there is stuck and stale. 

I strongly suspect that Platt wants to equate intellect with SOM so that he can then take all of Pirsig's reasons for wanting to expand rationality and use them to destroy rationality instead. His political attitudes demonstrate his exclusive love of social level values, especially where they conflict with intellectual values. He'll pick religion and money over science and rights every time. Platt is essentially anti-intellectual and he reads Pirsig to serve that purpose. For Platt, what Pirsig thinks is beside the point. He doesn't care about that. He just thinks he found a little ammo depot in his war against liberals, intellectuals, atheists or basically anybody that doesn't fit his idea of a decent American. There are literally millions of guys just like him, all parroting the same exact lines. You've heard of the myth of Echo, who was condemned to foolishly repeat the words of others? Here in the USA we have a high-powered, high-tech, well financed version called the Republican echo chamber. Everything he says can be found in The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or some other talk radio show, The Weekly Standard or the National Review. On top of these newspapers, TV news, radio shows, and magazines there are the bolgs, web sites and public relations agencies and word doctors. Lot of people are unaware of these last two category and that's the way they like it. It's a machine. And the stuff that comes out of Platt's pen was produced by that machine. It has nothing to do with the MOQ and everything to do with right-wing propaganda. 

God bless Norman Rockwell and Ronald Reagan.





 		 	   		  
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