[MD] Rhetoric

Thu Nov 24 09:28:45 PST 2016

thanks , Horse. feel free to ventilate your opinion on the brexit, if any.

2016-11-24 16:04 GMT+01:00 Horse <horse at darkstar.uk.net>:

> Hi Folks
> My take on any discussion is that as long as it pertains to the MoQ and is
> at least vaguely civil then go for it.
> If it gets out of hand or abusive I'll intervene.
>
> Cheers
>
> Horse
>
>
> On 24/11/2016 12:29, David Harding wrote:
>
>> Dmb, Horse and all,
>>
>> Regarding the below - whilst we can see his ideas forming here - I think
>> his 1998 thoughts on the matter are superior. Having not received the book
>> yet Wikipedia suggests it distinguishes between two camps on the left - the
>> 'pragmatic progressive left' and the 'critical left'. His narrative of the
>> critical left moving towards apathy is very apt in my view. The rise of
>> Trump is, if anything, a failure of intellectual circles on the left to
>> defend the right things and the ‘post’ cultural left could only be at least
>> partly to blame.  I also love the following quote from “Competition for
>> political leadership is in part a competition between differing stories
>> about a nation’s self-identity, and between differing symbols of its
>> greatness”.  Mythos over logos indeed! An MOQ supported statement if I ever
>> heard one.
>>
>> Interestingly Rorty’s Vietnam war fracture time period lines up nicely
>> with a political fissure described independently by both Matt Stoller in
>> his excellent article http://www.theatlantic.com/pol
>> itics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/
>>   and by Thomas Frank in his book ‘Listen, Liberal - what ever happened
>> to the party of the people?’.   Both of these describe a takeover within
>> the Democratic party amongst the despondency of the Vietnam war by those in
>> favor of corporations over the trust-busting Democrats who were pushed
>> out.  Stoller writes:
>>
>>
>> “To young, liberal politicians, many of whom read (Charlie) Peters, there
>> was simply no difference between what the government was doing in one part
>> of the world and what corporate America was doing at home. This cynicism
>> allowed the traditional Republican notion of overregulation to be
>> introduced into a liberal-leaning group. Whether it was overregulated or
>> mismanaged by Wall Street, Penn Central had collapsed—so what was the
>> difference anyway? The idea of Wall Street posing some kind of specialized
>> problem was dated. After all, it hadn’t been banks sending young people to
>> die in the jungle. Remember also, this is the generation that included
>> people like Pete Stark, the congressman who jump-started his campaign by
>> putting a peace sign on his bank.”
>>
>>
>> He goes on to write about how this cynicism naturally produced
>> libertarian style arguments on both the right and left and helped to create
>> what we now know as Neoliberalism.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> But to speak to your point at the larger conflict level -  that’s right
>> regarding this conflict between social and intellectual values. What the
>> MOQ provides us is a language where we can condemn one side -not just as
>> someone’s subjective opinion - but a fact backed by millions of years of
>> evolution…  It would be great use it on MD!
>>
>>
>>
>> Horse - I’m walking wide eyed into politics territory here.  Here’s
>> hoping that you’ll reconsider this rule so we can confidently start
>> discussing these things with the strength of the MOQ..
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Nov 21, 2016, at 9:47 AM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Hello, MOQers:
>>>
>>>
>>> I suppose everyone knows that people are suspicious of the emotional
>>> language in "rhetoric" and consider "sophistry" to be a form of
>>> manipulative deception. The conventional meaning isn't likely to change
>>> anytime soon and that's fine because there is empty speech and there are
>>> plenty of manipulative deceivers that deserve the name. In telling the
>>> story of philosophy Pirsig turns those meanings upside down.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> “Plato’s hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle
>>> in which the reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the
>>> reality of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a
>>> huge struggle for the future mind of man.” -- Robert Pirsig
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As the story is usually told, rhetoric is too emotional to be considered
>>> serious about the truth. Our feelings have no bearing on the truth, this
>>> story goes, and clear thinking is about cool logic and putting one's
>>> passions aside. But, Pirsig says, this story doesn't make as much sense as
>>> it used to.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> “It’s been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the
>>> passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an
>>> understanding of nature’s order which was as yet unknown. Now it’s time to
>>> further an understanding of nature’s order by reassimilating those passions
>>> which were originally fled from. The passions, the emotions, the affective
>>> domain of man’s consciousness, are a part of nature’s order too. The
>>> central part.” — Robert Pirsig
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> At certain points in the re-telling and inversion of this old slanderous
>>> story Pirsig is downright angry about it. He finally realizes that the
>>> Platonic demand for passionless dialectic has the effect of excluding
>>> Quality, which is the whole thing for Pirsig.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> “Phædrus’ mind races on and on and then on further, seeing now at last a
>>> kind of evil thing, an evil deeply entrenched in himself, which pretends to
>>> try and understand love and beauty and truth and wisdom but whose real
>>> purpose is never to understand them, whose real purpose is always to usurp
>>> them and enthrone itself. Dialectic - the usurper. That is what he sees.
>>> The parvenu, muscling in on all that is Good and seeking to contain it and
>>> control it."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> And he's feeling triumphant about this discovery because it turns out
>>> that the Sophists weren't demagogues, hucksters, or confidence men. They
>>> were teaching Quality and they were teaching it the same way he had been
>>> teaching it to his student in Montana.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Lightning hits! Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were
>>> teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine 'virtue.' But areté.
>>> Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before
>>> form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been
>>> absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality,
>>> and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> And this re-telling of ancient history is part of the book's central
>>> project, which is a root expansion of rationality. The criticisms of
>>> rationality that he offers almost always involve the problem of objective
>>> truth. Value-free science has got to go, he says. Attitudes of objectivity
>>> make our thinking stiff and narrow and entail a denigration of subjectivity
>>> so that Quality is JUST what you like, is JUST your opinion or assessment
>>> of some thing or other. But this is part of that same old slander against
>>> the Sophists and rhetoricians, Pirsig says, and our form of rationality
>>> would actually be vastly improved by putting Quality at the cutting edge of
>>> all experience and all thought. Quality is right there at the very roots of
>>> our thinking and by including Quality our thinking is broadened and
>>> deepened and enriched by the inclusion of the emotional and aesthetic
>>> quality that pervades our thought regardless of whether we acknowledge it
>>> or not. You gotta have a feel for the work, he says, and that's not just
>>> about fixing motorcycles. It's about everything. All the time.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> For Pirsig, "rhetoric" simply means excellence in thought and speech.
>>> Rhetoric is truer than objective truth because it includes the heart as
>>> well the head, so to speak. To talk truthfully will mean that the claim is
>>> supported by evidence and its expression logically sound, just as before,
>>> but that's no longer good enough. Speaking truthfully also means that you
>>> care about the truth, have feelings about that truth and maybe your
>>> expression shows the power or the beauty of that truth. To move or persuade
>>> another is not a sinister manipulation or a deception. It's a good thing
>>> and we should love it somebody does it right.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>>
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>>> Robert M. Pirsig's MoQ deals with the fundamentals of existence and
>>> provides a more coherent system for understanding reality than our current
>>> paradigms allow
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
> --
>
>
> "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments
> that take our breath away."
> — Bob Moorehead
>
>
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parser