Steve began his essay:
I'd like us to try to explore the political implications of Pirsig's
anti-theism.
dmb says:
I think the MOQ is anti-theistic for moral reasons and the political
implications are pretty well covered under the notion that an intellectually
guided society is better than a society dominated by social values. I guess
that goes for people too. You can see how all the basic distinctions within the
MOQ bear on the issue. I mean, it's not just about the distinction between
social and intellectual, it's also about the distinction between static and
Dynamic and it's consistent with the pragmatic theory of truth and with
philosophical mysticism.
"Phaedrus saw nothing wrong with this ritualistic religion as long as the
rituals are seen as merely a static portrayal of DQ, a sign-post which allows
socially pattern-dominated people to see DQ. The problem has always been that
the rituals, the static patterns, are mistaken for what they merely represent
and are allowed to destroy the DQ they were originally intended to preserve."
(Pirisg in Lila, near the end of chapter 30)
Some relevant comments from the Copleston annotations:
180 "The MOQ supports religion but does not support many Christian traditions."
193 "Quality is nature. The MOQ says there is no spiritual principle in man
that makes knowledge possible. Nature does the whole job."
208 "The MOQ would add a fourth stage where the term "God" is completely
dropped as a relic of an evil social suppression of intellectual and Dynamic
freedom. The MOQ is not just atheistic in this regard. It is anti-theistic."
216 "Faith is not required for an understanding of Quality. Here Quality
succeeds where Bradley's Absolute and Hegel's Being and the Buddhist
Nothingness and the Hindu Oneness and the theists' God and Allah and
you-name-it, all of them fail. For Quality, no faith is required because there
is no way you can disbelieve that there is such a thing as quality. You cannot
conceive of or live in a world in which nothing is better than anything else."
228 "The MOQ does not rest on faith. In the MOQ faith is very low quality
stuff, a willingness to believe falsehoods."
235 "When you hear the words 'spirit' and 'faith' always look for a traditional
religionist trying to sneak his goods in the back door. ...like the
positivists, the MOQ drops spirit and faith, cold."
In chapter 13 of Lila, immediately following Pirsig's explaination of the five
moral codes, there is a crucial passage that bears repeating in this context.
It begins on page 163 of the bantam hardback edition:
"The structuring of morality into evolutionary levels suddenly givesshape to
all kinds of blurred and confused moral ideas that are floatingaround in
present cultural heritage. ...Like the stuff Rigel wasthrowing at him this
morning, the old Victorian morality. That wasentirely within that one code -
the social code. Phaedrus thought thatcode was good as far as it went, but it
didn't really go anywhere. Itdidn't know it's origins and it didn't know its
own destinations, andnot knowing them it had to be exactly what it was;
hopelessly static,hopelessly STUPID, a form of evil in itself."
"EVIL... If he'd called it that one-hundred-and-fifty years ago hemight have
gotten himself into some real trouble. People got mad backthen when you
challanged their social institutions, and they tended totake reprisals. He
might have gotten himself ostracized as some kind ofa social menace. And if
he'd said it six-hundred years ago he might havebeen burned at the stake."
"But today it's hardly a risk. Its more of a cheap shot. Everybodythinks those
Victorian moral codes are stupid and evil, or old-fashionedat least, except
maybe a few religious fundamentalists andultra-right-wingers and ignorant
uneducated people like that. That's whyRigel's sermon this morning seemed so
peculiar. Usually people likeRigel do their sermonizing in favor of what ever
is popular. That waythey're safe. Didn't he know all that stuff went out years
ago? Wherewas he dutring the revolution of the sixties?"
PARAGRAPH FOUR"Where had he been during this whole century? That's what this
wholecentury's been about, this struggle between intellectual and
socialpatterns. That's the theme song of the twentieth century. Is societygoing
to dominate the intellect or is intellect going to dominatesociety? ... That
was the thing this evolutionary morality brought outclearer than anything else."
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