> Pirsig wrote: > Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control of society, > were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the > social control of intellect. > > Craigerb replied: > International socialism/national socialism--not a lot to choose from. > > dmb says: > Craig's comment is a fine example of the kind of ideological distortions I > was just complaining about.
No distortion. Both "isms" are essentially totalitarian. > dmb said: > ...the New Deal is classic American liberalism and the conservative > movement - along with the boys from the Chicago school of ecomonics - has > been taking it apart bit by bit for decades. > > Craig replied: > Thankfully. The challenge for us at MD is to present the intellectual > backing for the 2 systems & to evaluate which has the higher value. > > dmb says: > Well, you can probably defend fascism intellectually (if you can overcome > the moral qualms) but that would only mean your defense is intellectual. > The thing you'd be defending would still be a glorification of social > authority. As are all forms of socialism, including the New Deal. . >And if money is a measure of social quality, which is what > Pirsig says, then capitalism and the so-called "free market" is an > ideology that rejects intellectual control of social level values. You forgot to mention that Pirsig praised the free market. > Now think about all this in terms of today's conservatives, in terms of > what conservative MOQers say in this forum. Do they not generally support > the "military and economic castes"? Don't they often express resentment > toward the academic world, toward any kind of socialism? Don't they > generally dispute global warming, the theory of evolution, and attack > criticisms of war and capitalism as if they were criticism of goodness and > freedom itself? Thankfully. Because as Pirsig observed: "Today we are living in an intellectual and technological paradise and a moral and social nightmare because the intellectual level of evolution, in its struggle to become free of the social level, has ignored the social level's role in keeping the biological level under control. Intellectuals have failed to understand the ocean of biological quality that is constantly being suppressed by social order." (Lila, 24) 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/
