On 9 May 2009 at 17:07, Andre Broersen wrote: > Platt: > Can the reason for MOQ support of the free market be any plainer? > > Andre: > > Platt, if this is your answer to my questions, I must remove any benefit of > doubt towards your insights and understanding of the MoQ I had.
You mean I don't understand plain English? > It means that you actively support the subjective egocentric religious > doctrine of Protestantism and the individualistic political doctrine, > grounded in Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke's conception of a person as a > mental substance, > and the laissez-faire economic theory formulated by Adam Smith and > Jevons, which rests in turn on Locke, Hume and Bentham. Those doctrines as you call them are irrelevant to Pirsig's reason for endorsing free market capitalism over socialism. Do you think any of them ever imagined anything like Dynamic Quality? > In ZMM and Lila Pirsig talks about his experiences and views on the > practical application of these doctrines and concludes they have led America > (and not only America) to an intellectual, social, and economic rust-belt, a > whole society that has given up on Dynamic improvement and is slowly trying > to slip back to Victorianism, the last static ratchet-latch. Lila p 310) Pirsig's indictment is aimed at the flaw in SOM intellect's attempts to manage society. Surely you don't believe that Marxist socialist doctrines somehow escaped SOM.. . > I will now put you among the Victorians that Pirsig talks about. Yes, they > had some virtues but their biggest crime is forsaking Dynamic improvement. You are mistaken. From Chapter 17, Lila: "What we tend to forget is that, unlike the European aristocrats they aped, the American Victorians were a very creative people. The telephone, the telegraph, the rail road, the transatlantic cable, the light bulb, the radio, the phonograph, the motion pictures, and the techniques of mass production-almost all the great technological changes that are associated with the twentieth century are, in fact, American Victorian inventions. This city is composed of their value patterns! It was their optimism, their belief in the future, their codes of craftsmanship and labor and thrift and self-discipline that really built twentieth-century America. Since the Victorians disappeared the entire drift of this century has been toward a dissipation of these values." I'm happy to be lumped with "very creative people." > This given, you should stop blaming the commies and socialists (they > obviously exist in your mind) and look at yourself and how your thoughts and > actions perpetuate a system that degenerates everything back a latch. > Dmb (and many others) was right: you seem to have a lot to lose. Are you suggesting socialists and communists don't exist? As for free market capitalism being degenerating, I agree with Pirsig's opposite view that it is a "Dynamic institution." > Just do not hide behind or take credit from the MoQ in support of your > convictions. The MoQ says that you have a defect in your reasoning, a defect > Mr Pirsig has been trying to expose and eradicate for the past thirty five > years. I think you have it backwards. I support many of Pirsig's convictions as he plainly states them in Lila and elsewhere. > I'm disappointed. Me too. It seems your anti-protestant and philosophical/political/economic views have built up an immunity in your mind against what Pirsig actually says. Regards, Platt 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/
