HZ said: ...About a particular history, that of the US, of Victorian GB etc. And the analysis is convincing, but what with the Bolshevik/ Chinese revolutions, the WWII, the reshuffling of the balkans and the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, India, revolutions in Latin America? Do you think Pisrigs explanation "fits all"? No. It offers a mode of analysis, of understanding.
dmb says: Do I think the conflict between social and intellectual values can be used as a way to analyze conflicts around the globe, to analyze the events in China, Slovenia, the world wars and such? Yep. I surely do. Not least of all because conflicts in the "third world" are almost alway a result of the vestigages of colonialism. In that sense, yes, I think the MOQ's insight "fits all". As I understand it, the wide variety of reactionary movements we are presently witnessing (various kinds of fascists and fundamentalists such as Bin Ladin, Franco, Falwell, and the Moonies) can all be seen as anti-intellectual. HZ said: Btw, the example in Slovenia (as small a state it might be) on how a intellectual values reshape the society, or how this happened also in the foundation of the Turkish republic, or to certain degrees the Cuban revolution and of course the Calvinist reformations are solid examples of how the intellect can read the social value systems and from the truths they derive from them influence it through radical or ethical stances. dmb says: I'm not sure what you mean here, but let me use Slovenia as an example of how the conflict between social and intellectual values can be used to shed light on the political struggles of our era. Its a little strange and complicated but we can still see the same basic conflict at work. The government of the former Yugoslavia was not exactly a great example of an intellectually guided society but it found itself in the strange position of having to keep several different ethnic groups within the laws of a single nation. During that time, some would argue that it was done for the greater good, these various cultures were more or less supressed or made to conform. And we all saw what happened when that government fell, namely each of these groups re-asserted their own culture and traditions and attempted to gain independence from or even dominance over the others. So what we saw in the former Yugoslavia was a war of one fascist movement against other fascists movement. I believe it was the Serbian political party whose slogan was, The Right party, Right now. (Which wouldn't be an inaccurate slogan for Bush's party or Fox News, by the way.) And that's pretty typical of what goes on when social values are suppressed or threatened of denigrated. These social level values have something like an immune system built right into them to protect themselves from other tribes or nations, etc. But for the past 100 years or so this immune system reacts to intellectual values as if they were an alien threat. That's why we see insane stuff like the suppression of scientific facts about everything from evolution to global warming. That's why we see an anti-intellectual uber-American cowboy in the White House. (George and I have something in common, a number we share. 98.6 is my body temperature and his IQ.) Iraq, by the way, is similar to the former Yugoslavia. It is a nation invented by the Brits, one that pays no respect to the cultural and religious differences within its territory. This is why civil war was so easy to predict. The social values of the majority of the population have been suppressed by a small minority with big guns. As nasty as he was, Saddam's government held this water and oil mixture together with vigorous shaking. Remove that artificial bonding agent and presto, you've got "sectarian violence" or, as it is uneuphemistically called, civil war. I'm not saying that the social/intellectual conflict is the only factor, but it can be seen as an underlying cause in just about any conflict you'd care to name. Sometimes one has to suspend certain ideas about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and overcome certain prejudices, but I've yet to find a case where Pirsig's insight didn't shed some light on the situation. Thanks, dmb _________________________________________________________________ Booking a flight? Know when to buy with airfare predictions on MSN Travel. http://travel.msn.com/Articles/aboutfarecast.aspx&ocid=T001MSN25A07001 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
