[MD] The Moral Landscape

[plattholden at gmail.com]

>From you, Ian, I take that as a compliment.

On 25 Oct 2010 at 23:13, Ian wrote:

You're an arsehole too Platt, but fortunately not all arseholes are  
created equal.

Sent from my iPhone

On 25 Oct 2010, at 22:42, "Platt Holden" <plattholden at gmail.com> wrote:

> What DMB always leaves out (for obvious reasons) is that Pirsig,  
> after saying all that about the intellectual superiority of  
> socialism (a debatable point because capitalism gets plenty of  
> intellectual heft from Adam Smith to F.A. Hayek to Milton Friedman)  
> concludes with:
> "What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the  
> socialists, reasoning intelligently and objectively, have  
> inadvertently closed the door to Dynamic Quality in the buying and  
> selling of things. They closed it because the metaphysical structure  
> of their objectivity never told them Dynamic Quality exists."
>
> Free-enterprise system superior! Get it?
>
> I know left-wingnuts like DMB can never bring themselves to admit  
> it, as his diatribe below so vividly illustrates. But, there it is  
> -- an undeniable conclusion. Any other spin is truly intellectually  
> dishonest.
>
> Platt
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com 
> >
> To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 3:18 PM
> Subject: Re: [MD] The Moral Landscape
>
>
>>
>> Platt asked:
>> Was Pirsig intellectually lazy and dishonest in generalizing that  
>> capitalism was superior to socialism?
>>
>>
>> dmb says:
>>
>> Is Platt being intellectually lazy and dishonest in reporting what  
>> Pirsig says about capitalism and socialism? Yes, very lazy and very  
>> dishonest. I've had to balance out his selective reading of the  
>> text dozens of times. The following quotes not only put major  
>> qualifications on Pirsig's positive statements about capitalism,  
>> they reflect the overall thrust of the MOQ's moral hierarchy much  
>> better. The evolutionary morality is all about movement toward  
>> higher and higher values. And with respect to politics in  
>> particular, the danger is that society won't be intellectually  
>> guided and we will instead drift back to the last static latch,  
>> those social level Victorian values. Today's free-market  
>> Republicans ARE those neo-Victorians that Pirsig warns us about.  
>> The tea baggers, the corporate whores, the religious right, the  
>> authoritarians and family values moralists are the various stars in  
>> a constellation called backwards.
>>
>> Whose side are you on? What values do you want in our society? Is  
>> there something about the phrase "more moral" or "absolutely  
>> superior" that confuses you?
>>
>>
>> Pirsig said:
>> "...a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values  
>> over social values is absolutely superior to one that does  
>> not." (Lila, p.311)
>>
>> "From a static point of view, socialism is more moral than  
>> capitalism. It's a higher form of evolution. It is an  
>> intellectually guided society, not just a society that is guided by  
>> mindless traditions."
>>
>> "It is not that Victorian social economic patterns are more moral  
>> than socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite.  
>> They are less moral as static patterns go."
>
>
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