[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[John Carl]

Hi Platt and Bo,

The quote is from the Copleston Annotations, wherein Pirsig reflexively
discusses Idealism.


> Hi Bo,
>
> The quote sounds familiar but I can't pinpoint the source.

As for the MOQ being
> anti-intellectual, it certainly is anti-SOM because SOM, the current
> intellectual level, is defective. It "has no provision for morals." (Lila,
> 22)
> Don't hold your breath for an intellectual level that admits that the world
> is
> a moral order and that evolution was driven by betterness. Here on a site
> that
> purports to understand the MOQ, resistance to the main MOQ premise appears
> impenetrable. By and large, SOM stands unbowed despite Pirsig's best
> efforts.
>
>
John:

I think that the biggest obstacle in overcoming SOM, is the "S". It stems
from our society's over-attachment to the mechanisms of ego - the subject -
which binds people to this worldview.  And ALL of our social programming has
become so predicated upon this force, our laws and political and economic
institutions so dependent upon the big S,  that it takes more than an
intellectual realization to free people from their blind spot.

And while Zen is a useful technique to be used in that rigid Japanese brand
of social reinforcement, it doesn't translate so well in our society.

All this to say, be patient.  Sometimes it takes millennia for these things
to work themselves out.


[P]
> Unfortunately we are living the "social nightmare" brought on by 100 years
> of
> "intellectual" control of society, beginning with Wilson. "Phaedrus thought
> that if he had to pick one day when the shift from social domination of
> intellect to intellectual domination of society took place, he would pick
> November II, 1918, Armistice Day, the end of World War 1. And if he had to
> pick
> one person who symbolized this shift more than any other, he would have
> picked
> President Woodrow Wilson."(Lila, 22)  Now we face, thanks to Wilson and his
> communist/socialist heirs,  what to our forefathers would have been
> unimaginable -- a bankrupt U.S.A.
>

John:

I agree with Pirsig, Platt, that that was a turning point.  And a
fascinating topic of study as to how and where things went wrong.  I
disagree with your "social nightmare".  There are problems, but they could
be much worse.

Royce saw the issue as "the betrayal of civilization by Germany" and another
turning point, according to Alan Bloom came immediately after WWII, when
many of the underlying philosophical and practical underpinnings of Germany
were adopted by her conquerors, America and Russia. There's a lot to
disentangle.


Bo:
>


>
> For some reason Pirsig had dropped the SOM in LILA, but from ZAMM
> we know that Aristotle was regarded a chief figure in SOM's evolution
> so again we get a proof for the intellect=SOM. In my "jesuitic" view Q-
> Intellect isn't a something dominated by S/O patterns, it IS the very
> SOM and "the framework dominated by value" is the MOQ that by no
> twist of logic can be an intellectual sub-set.
>
> [P]
> I along with several others agree with you interpretation of the MOQ. That
> it
> is so fiercely rejected by some illustrates the inner fear of the
> intellectual
> level that viciously counterattacks any questioning of its self-proclaimed
> superiority. Finally, putting the MOQ inside its own structure is like
> driving
> your car around a parking lot looking for where you parked your car.  In a
> word, farcical.
>
>
John:  I disagree with you both, on this issue, but I wouldn't classify my
opposition as "fierce" so much as "befuddled".  What is the real point of
your stance?  I get confused by Bo's terminology sometimes, but I understand
your words pretty clearly Platt, and thus would welcome any clarification.

Your analogy doesn't quite do the trick tho, because if I dropped my cell
phone when I got into my car, and then left, the most natural thing in the
world would be to drive my car around, looking for the place I'd parked it
earlier.

done that, been there.

John