Horse and squad
They let me out of my cubicle at the weekend so time again for the LS. Now,
where were we..
Horse wrote:
>When I posted this months starter I'd just been reading some articles
> about M.A.I. (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) which, in short,
>is a new slant on the (generally) western nations hobby of screwing
>the Third World. There's plenty of information about MAI and its
>opponents on the 'net but what it seems to boil down to is TNC's
>(TransNational Corporations - new name, same villains) removing all
>obstacles to the righteous path of profit - those obstacles being
>people, environment, governments etc. Diana wrote:
I found a pamphlet about it here http://www.greenecon.org/MAI/, it's
extremely scary stuff, here's a quote which sums it up:
"The MAI is designed to multiply the power of corporations over governments
and eliminate policies that could restrict the movement of factories and
money around the world. It places corporate profits above all other values.
"
"It places corporate profits above all other values." In other words those
who have money will simply dictate what happens to the rest of us and our
planet. So what happened to Pirsig's battle between the intellect and
society in which the intellect won? I think that was rather premature, the
social level is still going strong.
>On 6 Apr 99, at 12:41, Diana McPartlin wrote:
>> ... but actually the intellect is the only
>> thing that can overthrow the social level so it's actually very
>> powerful. The social level works by playing on the human tendency
>> to go along with the crowd and fit in. If people start switching their
>> brains on and asking too many questions then the social level
Horse:
>which, fortunately, is exactly what happened. After co-ordinated (and
>unco-ordinated) action by various groups and individuals MAI has
>been dropped - for the time being.
>This, for me, illustrates an interesting situation for the MOQ in
>relation to a particular form of Power. On the one hand, it was surely
>individuals who initially sat up and took notice of the impending
>disaster for the planet posed by the MAI, but on the other hand it
>took the power of many to stop it. Individuals had to organize into
>powerful and directed social groups in order to impede the progress
>of other powerful and directed social groups. But directed by whom
>and who's fighting who and how. This seems to me to illustrate a
>general case of opposing intellectual factions fighting it out using the
>social level as its means of domination and distribution.
Which raises some uncomfortable questions. If people are against the MAI
because they understand the economics behind it then that's an intellectual
decision. But if they're just ranting about it because it seems like the
trendy thing to do then there's no real progress. The debate stops being
about the real issues and just comes down to who's got the best pr
campaign.
>On 6 Apr 99, at 12:41, Diana McPartlin wrote:
>> When you understand the social
>> level as Pirsig paints it you can see that this social "giant" that's
>> controlling all of us doesn't just live in "them". Sure it manifests
>> itself more in some people than others, but basically it's all of us.
Horse:
>There are the followers and the initiators on both sides but for the
>'Dark Side' of the 'Giant' to dominate it requires intellect to work in
>its favour to provide it with the means to channel its progress.
>Someone has to initiate the ideologies involved - it's hardly a group
>effort in the initial stages. Someone must come up with a 'Neat Idea'
>and want to share it.
If we're talking about economics and politics then I'd agree that ideas
start at the intellectual level and are disseminated through the social
level. In other things like fashion, music, etc, the social level just
mutates and new patterns evolve - so it can work both ways.
>The MOQ seems to tell us that it is moral for intellect to utilize
>society for its own purposes, but when those purposes are the
>domination or destruction of other parts of the intellectual level is it
>still moral? The moral relationship of intellect and society becomes
>more complex than the simplistic way it seems to appear in Pirsigs
>description when additional power relationships are thrown into the
>pot. When ideologies (intellectual value) and their champions
>compete with other ideologies for intellectual domination there is,
>almost always, a social element involved. In response to the TNC's
>where are the opposing social giants and their intellectual
>champions? Governments? Forget it!! The UN? Not a chance!
>Interestingly enough the MAI battle has polarised a whole bunch of
>organizations, some well known others not so well known. The Red
>Cross, Oxfam, WWF (World Wildlife Fund), Friends of the Earth, the
>Third World Network are among them.
>
>In the starter post for this months subject Pirsig was quoted from Lila
> as saying:
>
>"Until the First World War the Victorian social codes dominated.
>From the First World War until the Second World War the
>intellectuals dominated unchallenged.From the Second World War
>until the seventies the intellectuals continued to dominate, but with
>an increasing challenge - call it the 'Hippie revolution,' - which failed.
>And from the early seventies on there has been a slow confused
>mindless drift back to a kind of pseudoVictorian moral posture
>accompanied by an unprecedented growth in crime"
>R.M.Pirsig Lila Ch.24 P.353 Pub. Black Swan
>
>which may not be the whole story. The TNC's started to gain strength
> in the Victorian era with their foundation of Victorian social codes
>and continued to gain power unabated until sometime around the
>early 70's when people became increasingly aware of the
>environmental and social damage being caused. Are we witnessing
>the gradual rise of opposing 'Giants' in response to the well
>established order? And where is the intellectual value involved?
The question really deserves much more than I have time for now, but
briefly, the first question it raises for me is what makes an organization
an organization anyway. Shared values must be part of it, but there also
has to be some structure within which the members of the organization work
together towards those values. Given that all value is experience it's not
obvious to me that that structure has to be an entirely social pattern but
then I guess that depends on what you understand by social and
intellectual. (can everyone please spare me their 2cs for now, I've been
asking the squad to put their heads together and come up with some workable
descriptions of the basic elements of the MOQ since October 1997. Just to
save anyone wasting their time, I mean explanations that have been THOUGHT
OUT not just whatever happens to be floating around in your head at the
moment.)
... anyway, it's inevitable that social patterns will evolve in any
organization so the question becomes, are all organizations equally
immoral? Social patterns that have been developed for intellectual purposes
would seem to be more moral than those that have been developed for social
reasons. Plus an organization that uses the intellectual level to
communicate ideas would more more moral than one that uses the social
level.
Still, I think that the larger organizations get, the more they will
probably depend on the social level. The intellectual level is
time-consuming and it requires effort on the part of the organization's
members. It's far easier to communicate using slogans than it is to ask
people to read economics books themselves.
Do we really need giants to fight other giants? Is there any other way we
could fight them? Gosh the questions seems so radical I'm frightened to
raise them.
Back to the slow burner, then
Diana
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
