Hi Chris, Platt, DMB, all,
Chris asked:
From a MOQ perspective, what is the goal of politics? I mean, what
would a MOQist say that
politics should strive for? The Goal then, not why it's there, that's
quite
obvious, but the goal.
Platt answered:
> Good question. My answer is precisely the same as Pirsig's:
>
> "My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the
> world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's
> all. ...We've had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as
> a natural
> resource without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted.
> Everyone's just about out of gumption. And I think it's about time to
> return to the
> rebuilding of this American resource -- individual worth."
> -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
>
> In other words, the goal of politics is to encourage individualism.
> That's
> all.
Steve:
I looked through a new edition of ZAMM recently and found an interview
with Pirsig where he says that the business about gumption ("We do need
a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned
gumption. We really do.") was just the Narator playing the politician
and trying to get the audience to like him by extolling the virtues of
something that no one could possibly disagree with. If anyone has
access to this edition, I'd appreciate it if you could post the quote.
Anyway, I don't immediately see promoting individualism as what the MOQ
and Pirsig thinks the goal of politics is.
A more relevant quote is this from Lila:
"You can see that where political institutions have improved throughout
the centuries the improvement can usually be traced to a static-Dynamic
combination: a king or constitution to preserve the static, and a
parliament or jury that can act as an Dynamic eraser; a mechanism
whereby new Dynamic insight can wipe out old static patterns without
destroying the government itself.
Phædrus was surprised by the conciseness of a commentary on Robert's
Rules of Order that seemed to capture the whole thing in two sentences:
No minority has a right to block a majority from conducting the legal
business of the organization. No majority has a right to prevent a
minority from peacefully attempting to become a majority. The power of
those two sentences is that they create a stable static situation where
Dynamic Quality can flourish."
Steve:
This last sentence especially says what I think the MOQ idea of the
goal of politics is. Those who said something about balance were saying
this too.
Pirsig continues:
"It seems as though any static mechanism that is open to Dynamic
Quality must also be open to degeneracy-to falling back to lower forms
of quality...This creates the problem of getting maximum freedom for
the emergence of Dynamic Quality while prohibiting degeneracy from
destroying the evolutionary gains of the past."
Steve:
Again, it seems the goal of politics is to find the right balance.
Regards,
Steve
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