Keen insights as usual, John, neatly summed up by Pirsig in his revelations about the the force of celebrity in cementing static social patterns: "All the feuding and battling for prestige among academics and scientists." (Lila, 20) Academic behavior was further illustrated in the relationship of Dusenberry with his peers. Such contrarians take a beating in the ivied halls, as conservatives on the faculty will attest.
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 3:10 AM, John Carl <[email protected]> wrote: > This is mainly out of the context of my dialogues with Arlo. I claimed > there that I haven't a problem with the academic approach to the MoQ as A > method. I just don't agree with it as THE method or the Best method. To > be > fair, I thought I'd share some of the problems I see with it. > > Arlo himself gave me some keen insight into the issue of academic pursuit > of > truth in an earlier post where he pointed out the conflation of capitalism > with the academy which has turned philosophy into a thing to be owned. > > Intellectual ideas as capitalistic things don't seem so bad, at first > glance. But a deeper dig shows us some very big problems. For instance, > suppose you spent ten years pursuing and studying a certain line of > thought, > supported by specific scholars and you were almost ready to submit your > work > for doctoral consideration. > > But just as you finish your thesis, a new line of thought arises that > hadn't > occured to you during the years you'd spent studying along your pre-chosen > lines. Suppose you become convinced that this new insight completely > obviates all the work you've done for ten years. All the sacrifices you've > made, all the efforts you've poured into your thesis, completely useless. > > In such a case, the temptation to ignore truth in the service of > self-interest would be so strong, that you probably wouldn't even be able > to > conceptualize such intrusive insights. You'd fight against them with all > your being for the static weight of your current line of philosophical > endeavor would so weigh down your mind you would even be able give any > other > a fair chance. Your intellect would be chained to static formulation, > regardless of the quality of your position. > > And for an MoQists, more than any other moral imperative is this one, > INTELLECT MUST BE FREE FROM SOCIAL CONSTRAINT. > > That's the problem with Quality in an academic matrix, and it's not a > problem with Quality, it's a problem with the academic matrix. > 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
