Hi Platt
> Hi John, > I hope an "over-attachment to the mechanisms of the ego" doesn't represent > an > criticism of individualism. If we deny the sanctity of individual life, we > revert to social level values where group solidarity crushes contrarians > like > Pirsig, and humanity stagnates in a swamp of certainties, like it did in > the > Dark Ages. > > John: I share your concerns Platt. For there is that tendency of the pendulum to swing, and we've had decades of a strident and arrogant individualism which is sure to cause a reactionary collectivism, as when the feces impacts the turbojet and all hell breaks loose. We've discussed before how individuals created with no sense of community connection or duty, stimulated by programming to unrealistic desires, have ironically formed a vast collective of selfish individuals who all share a positive view of themselves with no actual moral foundation at all - how this is likely to have very, very negative consequences as they look for scapegoats in the form of big corporate entities. Confiscatory taxes are one thing, a dramatically French mob, casting about for a suitable Marie Antoinette is another. > > [P] > I've great respect for Allan Bloom, author of "Closing of the American > Mind," > who takes the academy to task for caving into 60's radicals. I'm not > familiar > with his critique of German "underpinnings," but if he is talking about the > premises that led the Weimar Republic to utter disaster, the parallels with > our > current situation are undeniable. > > What stuck most in my mind ( it has been a long time and I lost the book a while ago) was his explanation of how the Nihilistic philosophies of Nietchze and Schopenhaur were combined with a newly formed idea of pragmatism, to create a mood in the Volk which had a natural expression in Hitler. We love our scapegoats! It's all Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. But Hitler didn't arise in a vaccuum. It was Blooms particular genius to point to the underlying philosophical developments that produced Hitler, and pointed that many of them were identically adopted in America, after the war, as the conqueror assimilates all the most "pragmatically useful" ideas from the conquered enemy, and takes unto itself the seeds of it's eventual, and inevitable, undoing. Also his comparison of the wild, swinging and decadent Berlin of the 20's stemmed in part from this overthrow of Values and Morality. Take care, John 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
