On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 12:51 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > Right. It was the intellectualism of academicians, identified as such by > Pirsig. From their ivory towers came the flowering of Subject/Object > Metaphysics (SOM) which "has no provision for morals." That's the major > defect. That's the intellectualism that bothers Pirsig. And now, me. >
Well there is the point of contention then. What "they" did at this point. I'm no expert. I did read an interesting book on the subject by Allen Bloom called The Closing of the American Mind. He pointed to German philosophers and philosophies which directly led to the rise of national socialism in Germany. He showed parallels to our culture which predicted the rise of a similiar system and dictatorship. You can see the obvious evolution of moral decadence in society wherein the state has to step in and take control because the moral fiber of the people is eroded. And this was in the 80's, fer crissake, Bloom was ranting about kids listening to Walkman music in his academic setting and how this culture of easily -accessed pleasure was underminning any potential for greatness in our youth. You take a boy around puberty, and if he's real smart he's going to be at his peak for logic and math for the next five to ten years. If you destract him with a feel good pop culture sensibility his energy is going to be wasted. It has long term effects. And speaking of the state replacing conscience, I've been hearing radio ads lately focusing shame on a patron of a restaurant who's credit card is denied, and everybody in the restaurant goes tsk tsk and his girlfriend assures him there won't be another date and then a voiceover moralizes about the importantance of paying off one's debts. What is so scarey to me about this is the total ignorance displayed of the roots of moral training. If you see no reason to keep your word and pay your bills, a radio commercial isn't going to convict you. I guess in your terms, the statists, already confident through past victory now believe they can accomplish anything with their propoganda machine. > > > Or how about calling them "statists?" They want to use the physical force > of > the state to dominate society. They consider conservatives enemies > because conservatives object to their schemes to spread "caring and > compassion" at the point of a gun. If the Pen is mightier than the Sword, the Videocracy of the Technocrats is the atom bomb of all thought control and much more powerful than any gun. I don't know from conservative and liberal... I stay mostly away from politics and politicians. I do think that GW Bush was probably about the worst president we've ever had. Texas always gives us sucky presidents. > There is a huge difference between dictators and capitalists. Capitalists > can't round up dissidents and send them to death camps. I disagree. Russia seems to have had absolutely no trouble switching economic systems from Communism to Capitalism while maintaining the same sorts of authoritarian social controls. And couldn't you look at the US's recent record as to detention and torture and admit that not every singe person killed by our guns and our planes is a non-innocent? In some situations and for a certain time, Capitalism seems to be more efficient as an economic system than communism. . But plainly it is running out of steam and I'd be reluctant to tout it as the ultimate or ideal goal of society. > > > And they suppress good ideas that threaten their system. The goal then > is > > to earn their outright hostility and not just their feigned indifference. > > Note a problem. Note the hostility to conservative views on this site. Well I'm fairly new here, and unsure as to why there should be any hostility at all in the free interchange of ideas. But I'm aware it exists. It's an old problem, the blind men beating each other with their definition of the elephant. > Can you tell us a bit more about your attraction to Josiah Royce's > philosophy? Are you familiar with the philosopher David Stove? > I plan on talking about Royce a great deal. My attraction stems from his Quality as a philosopher and his obscurity and the many parallels I find in his Absolute Idealism and the MoQ as I understand it. I'm studying him now and making notes and will post them soon - at least what I've found so far. Never heard of David Stove, thanks for the tip. Peace, John 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/
