[MD] Straw Men and the Primacy of Trust

[Matt Kundert]

DMB said:
Anyway, I think merit and means can be talked about separately in 
the abstract but as a practical matter they are all tangled up in each 
other. If your means are bogus then merit goes out the window and 
if you have no merit but still insist on scoring points, then you have 
to resort to bogus means.

Matt:
Yeah, our disagreement appears to go down pretty far about the 
ethics of inquiry and the kinds of allowable psychological profiles 
and what maturity looks like.  You should check out the Trilling book: 
the moral stance you're taking has a history, and a very interesting 
one, one that continues to evolve.

The slim piece of your response I've pulled out above was just to 
make clear on my part that my discussion of a kind of 
Machiavellianism and that "means do matter in the long approach 
to just ends" was intended to articulate just that point, that merit 
and means are "all tangled up in each other."  What you see as 
my attempt to get you to act hypocritical, "phony" as you say, is 
my attempt to give a better ethics of inquiry once one realizes that 
they are tangled up.  (Not at all, of course, conceding that the 
behavior you described as being phony, e.g. to "preface the 
criticism with some kindness or follow the accusation with 
expressions of love," is really at all the kinds of behavior I was 
commending.  A better description is in my first post in this thread.  
(See "Pirsig Institutionalized" for a few negative comments about 
another "phony" behavior, the "just my opinion" qualifier.))

Matt