dmb said:
The socialism that Pirsig is talking about is the kind of thing you find in
Norway, Canada, France and the UK. In the United States, socialism can be seen
in things like FDR's New Deal, Johnson's Great Society. Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid, the post office, public schools and the interstate
highway system are the products of socialism. Does that resemble the killing
fields or the gas chambers in any way? No, of course not.
Dave Thomas replied:
I find 5 instances in Lila and none in ZaMM where Pirsig uses the word
socialism. In none of those five instances does he mention anything even
vaguely like you claim. .. I know you like to think you channel Pirsig, but,
one he not dead yet and two I'm not a believer of Cayce.
dmb says:
Oh yea, now I remember why I left this forum. Sigh.
No, Dave, I don't think I'm channeling Pirsig, just reading his books.
"Communism and socialism, programs for the intellectual control of society,
were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the social
control of intellect. ...The gigantic power of socialism and fascism, which
have overwhelmed this century, is explained by a conflict between levels of
evolution. This conflict explains the driving force behind Hilter not as an
insane search for power but as an all-consuming glorification of social
authority and hatred of intellectualism. ...In the United States the economic
and social upheaval was not so great as in Europe, but Franklin Roosevelt and
the New Deal, nevertheless, became the center of a lesser storm between social
and intellectual forces. The New Deal was many things, but at the center of it
all was the belief that intellectual planning by the government was necessary
for society to regain it's health." (Chapter 22)
You see? Here we find that socialism and Nazism are opposed to each other and
their opposition is a battle between intellect values and social authority. But
some people think they're the same thing, especially conservatives with
anti-intellectual attitudes. I suppose the irony is lost on such people.
David T quoted from 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 Dynamic Quality. You go to any socialist city and it's always a dull
place because there's little Dynamic Quality."
DT commented on the quote:
RMP, like you, either misspoke, miss-thought, is blind, intellectually
dishonest, or naïve because socialism and revolution are siamese twins. And
there is nothing as Dynamic as revolution.
dmb says:
Yea, that's more like it. The danger of socialism is that you might be exposed
to dullness, not that your ethnic group might be extinguished forever. The
problem with your complaint is that Pirsig doesn't miss the fact that cultural
upheavals are involved here. Not at all. He describes the shift from one to the
other as an overwhelming hurricane. That's what he was referencing by
describing FDR's New Deal as the "center of a lesser storm". I'd also point out
that we Americans are rather fond of revolutions. Check out the period between
1776 and 1790 and you'll see that revolution is as American as apple pie. It
also happens to be as french as toast and as English as muffins. We all think
that the government and the economy should serve the people rather than the
other way around.
Anyway, the complaint about socialism being dull doesn't refer to the
revolution that puts it in place but rather the intellectual planning that
happens once it is in place. FDR's New Deal was not a revolutionary war, it was
a set of government policies. Pirsig is saying that there ought to be some room
for the dynamic built right into those policies. He uses the Constitution of
the United States as an example of something that manages to achieve that. It
is a very specific set of rules but through the amendment process we can change
those rules. It also helps that the three branches have checks and balances and
the officials who operate them are regularly replaced by new elections and new
appointments by the elected. This was not done with Pirsig's notion of DQ in
mind and yet that's what it amounts to. Capitalism doesn't subscribe to the MOQ
either and yet it inadvertently has dynamism built right into it, and that
makes it work.
Most of this is all laid out in chapter 22 and it always made a lot of sense to
me. My undergrad degree was in intellectual history and did my mediocre little
thesis on Hitler. (25 years ago) There are tons and tons of things that I don't
know, but Pirsig's analysis beautifully explains those things I do know and
continues to be helpful as I learn more about it.
The thing that kills me about people calling Obama a socialist is that he's too
moderate for most liberals and socialism is to the left of liberalism. His
attitude is actually quite pragmatic. We'll try it and if it doesn't work we'll
just try something else. And he doesn't mind if the idea comes from the right
or left. Those are the terms in which he rejects the conservative free-market
solutions. He's not opposed for ideological reasons but simply because it
doesn't work. Why should we retain the policies that got us into this mess in
the first place, he asked a Senator from his own party just the other day. If
this is socialism, then I'm all for it.
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