On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 1:28 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]>wrote:
> > > There are right-wingers around these days who will try to tell you that > Hitler was a socialist but they're just Republican party shills and/or > ignorant of politics and history. I'd be surprized if there were more that a > few political scientists who would simply laugh at such an assertion. [Platt] DMB is a left-winger who like other left-wingers (most political scientists are left-wingers) want you to ignore the fact that Hitler's party was the National Socialist German Worker's Party. [DMB]The following is from chapter 22 of Lila.... "Communism and socialism, programs for the intellectual control over society, were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the social control of intellect. ...Phaedrus thought that no other historical or political analysis explains the enormity of these forces as clearly as does the MOQ. The gigantic power of socialism and fascism, which have overwhelmed this [20th] century, is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This conflict explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane search for power but as an all-consuming glorification of social authority and hatred of intellectualism. His anti-Semitism was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His hatred of communism was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His exaltation of the German volk was fueled by it. His fanatic persecution of any kind of intellectual freedom was driven by it." [Platt] For a different and deeper view of what Nazism was about, refer to the book "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg. [DMB] While I'm at it, this is from chapter 17 of Lila.... "That's what neither the socialists nor the capitalists ever got figured out. From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism. It's a higher form of evolution. It is an intellectually guided society, not just a society that is guided by mindless traditions. That's what gives socialism its drive. But what the socialists left out and what has all but killed their whole undertaking is an absence of a concept of indefinite DQ. On the other hand the conservatives who keep trumpeting about the virtues of free enterprise are normally just supporting their own self-interest. They are just doing the usual cover-up for the rich in their age-old exploitation of the poor. Some of them seem to sense there is also something mysteriously virtuous in a free enterprise system and you can see them struggling to put it into words but they don't have the metaphysical vocabulary for it any more than the socialists do." These are among the passages that Platt does not want you to notice. He has turned Pirsig's critique of SOM into a form of anti-intellectual, anti-socialist, free market advocacy. He doesn't want you to notice that this absence of a concept of DQ applies to both the capitalists and the socialist. He says that is what "neither" of them "ever got figured out". He says the free enterprisers "don't have the metaphysical vocabulary for it any more than the socialist do". Platt doesn't want you or anybody else to notice Pirsig saying, "it is not that Victorian social economic patterns are more moral than socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite. They are LESS moral as far as static patterns go." (emphasis is Pirsig's) [Platt] What DMB doesn't want you to notice is that having said all that, Pirsig goes on to say: "But what the socialists left out and what has all but killed their whole undertaking is an absence of a concept of indefinite Dynamic Quality. You go to any socialist city and it's always a dull place because there's little Dynamic Quality." And a bit later: "The Metaphysics of Quality provides the vocabulary. A free market is a * Dynamic* institution. What people buy and what people sell, in other words what people *value, *can never be contained by any intellectual formula. What makes the marketplace work is Dynamic Quality. The market is always changing and the direction of that change can never be predetermined. The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes *everybody* richer-by preventing static economic patterns from setting in and stagnating economic growth. * That* is the reason the major capitalist economies of the world have done so much better since World War II than the major socialist economies." [DMB] I watch the news and generally assess American politics according to the MOQ's depiction of the conflict between social and intellectual values and it really works for me. I was history major during my undergrad days, did my senior thesis on Hitler and I've never encountered anything that works so well to clarify and make sense of things. It has tuned my ears to hear what's going on under the public debates and it seems that this conflict doesn't just still continue to this day, we see it right here in this forum with guys like Platt, Craig, MK, Ham and the other conservatives. They are less extreme versions of what Pirsig describes here as social level reaction to intellectualism. And it's no accident that Platt in particular likes to quote the narrator, who is also dominated by social values. [Platt] Pirsig in Lila dominated by social values? LOL. And what I like to quote is Pirsig's direct and unambiguous explanation of the MOQ, such as, "The Metaphysics of Quality says . . ." (see above) Aslo DMB again omits a key point in the MOQ, in fact, probably the most important point of all, namely that today's dominant intellectual pattern based on a subject/object metaphysics has a defect in it, namely, it has "no provision for morals." DMB can continue down that immoral reactionary road of SOM if he wants, but I prefer the freedom road of Dynamic Quality. 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/
