[MD] Static Patterns Rock!

[david buchanan]

Marsha valkyr said to Andre:

The static world is not an illusion, the static world is like an illusion.  ...All conceptions and mental images that "atomic bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki" might signify are a counterfeit of the actual event.  It is in this understanding that I say it is "like" an illusion.


dmb says:

The subtitles of Pirsig's books are "An Inquiry into Values" and "An Inquiry into Morals". And in the second book he portrays the static world as a moral hierarchy. The Metaphysics of Quality says "it is absolutely morally bad" when "society undermines intellectual freedom for its own purposes"  and "it is absolutely morally good" when that same society "represses biological freedom for its own purposes," for example. "These moral bads and goods are not just 'customs'," Pirsig says, "They are as real as rocks and trees." The MOQ also says that moral reasonableness and human rights "have not just a sentimental basis, but a rational, metaphysical basis. They are essential to the evolution of a higher level of life from a lower level of life. They are for real."

I think it would be safe to say that being murdered by atomic weapons or by genocide would count as a violation of human rights. As Pirsig points out even with respect to imposing the death penalty on a convicted murderer, the evolutionary growth and the intellectual freedom of dead people is extremely limited. Kaput.

Marsha's answer isn't just incorrect. It's also morally bankrupt - if not completely devoid of morality - and the cold-heartedness of it is downright creepy.