Dave, you elitist, left-wing academic conservative basher, nice post and
very accurate.
It's amazing really that there are people out there that, when they know
nothing about a particular subject or can't be bothered to make the
effort to find out, not only resent those that have made the effort but
also want to disparage what they've done and prevent them from getting
that knowledge to others.
Learn nothing, know nothing.
So much for all the hot air about freedom and choice.
Horse
On 16/04/2010 20:25, david buchanan wrote:
Arlo said to Platt:
... I could, of course, try to dumb things down for just you, but given that everyone else understands me just fine, I'll
decline... If you can't "effortlessly understand" what someone writes, maybe the problem is with YOU? Naaaahhh... must
be those big bad intellectuals... So in a philosophy forum, who is the "average reader" you feel can't keep up with the
"academic" talk? ... Just how "dumb" do you think the "average reader" is here?
dmb says:
If you read or hear something that's understood effortlessly, then you're not
reading or hearing anything new. If you understand it right away, it's trivial
or you already knew it. But learning takes time and effort.
The complaint is strange because of the context. I mean, why would
anti-intellectuals even show up to discuss philosophy in first place? It
doesn't make sense to complain about incomprehension or blame it on the writer
because all you have to do is ask the other guys what he means. And so what if
you have to look up a word? I look up words all the time. Only takes a few
seconds at a time and after you do that a bunch of times your vocabulary has
been expanded. Are afraid that you might learn something? Are books, ideas and
thinkers your enemies? Even though this anti-intellectualism is as common as
the rain, I think it's a bizarre attitude. Again, it's the context. We're hear
to discuss the philosophy of a college professor, a philosophy in which
intellectual values are the most evolved, most moral of all static patterns.
We're talking about a system of thought that has the expansion of rationality
itself as one of its central aims.
I mean, I don't think it is within the range of valid interpretations to read
the MOQ as anti-intellectual. Pirsig's critique of SOM can be selected out and
made to seem anti-intellectual. Pirsig's distinctions between static
conceptualizations and dynamic reality can be made to seem anti-intellectual
too. So it's not exactly crazy or invented out of thin air. It just doesn't
make sense in the big picture. Pirsig is against SOM because it's too narrow.
It constricts our modes of rationality and he wants to expand them. He wants to
expand empiricism in a similar and compatible way. His aim is to improve the
intellect and our way of doing philosophy, not to bad-mouth it or trash it.
He's a critic, not a hater. His criticism of the intellectual level is
constructive. Literally. He explains its origins, purposes and limits.
But then there is just plain old-fashioned know-nothingism.
As Wikipedia puts it, "Nativism (politics) or political nativism, a term used by
scholars to refer to ethnocentric beliefs relating to immigration and nationalism. In
particular, it may refer to 19th and 20th century political movements in the United
States, especially the Know Nothings in the 1850s and the KKK in the 1920s."
This streak in American culture is quite recognizable in today's right-wing conservatives and it's basically a less
virulent version of the anti-intellectualism of German fascism. Pirsig describes this right-wing fascism as
anti-intellectual in every way. He describes it as a reactionary re-assertion of social level values against the newly
empowered intellectual values. These kinds of political movements and the attitudes that give them energy and power are
very far from a constructive critique of rationality or the limits of intellect. It's mostly just hate and fear. You
know what "arrogant" and "elitist" REALLY means? That's just what you call a guy when he makes you
feel stupid. It's a lot like junior high school, when "stuck up" really meant "she won't go out with
me". I mean, anti-intellectualism isn't a set of ideas so much as a general attitude that takes different shapes
in different places.
For my own part, I think it's more than appropriate to discuss James and other
pragmatists here because the MOQ is in the mainstream of American pragmatism.
Pirsig puts it in those terms on the last page of chapter 29. And he says that
this is very good news, politically, because he doesn't want his work to be
taken as some far out, cult favorite. It's good news, because then the MOQ can
hang there in the gallery mainstream academic thought and then it can be
positioned next to similar visions, whether they come out of pragmatism or not.
One doesn't need to have a personal hotline to Pirsig to know this stuff. It's
in the book.
_________________________________________________________________
The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_4
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/md/archives.html
--
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an
attractive and well preserved body, but to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine
in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what
a ride!"... Hunter S Thompson
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/md/archives.html
