All: A prophetic passage in Lila poses the question, "How do you tell right from wrong?":
"When people asked, 'If no culture, including a Victorian culture, can say what is right and what is wrong, then how can we ever know what is right and what is wrong?' the answer was, 'That's easy. Intellectuals will tell you. Intellectuals, unlike members of studiable cultures, know what they're talking and writing about, because what they say isn't culturally relative. What they say is absolute. This is because intellectuals follow science, which is objective.' "(Lila, 22) Lest you think PIrsig was exaggerating or just blowing smoke, consider the following from an academic at Boston University: "At stake are the most important questions: What is the right way for human beings to live? By what standard is anything true or good? Who gets to decide what? Implicit in Wilson's words and explicit in our ruling class's actions is the dismissal, as the ways of outdated "fathers," of the answers that most Americans would give to these questions. This dismissal of the American people's intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance is the very heart of what our ruling class is about. Its principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows things and operates by standards beyond others' comprehension. "While the unenlightened ones believe that man is created in the image and likeness of God and that we are subject to His and to His nature's laws, the enlightened ones know that we are products of evolution, driven by chance, the environment, and the will to primacy. While the un-enlightened are stuck with the antiquated notion that ordinary human minds can reach objective judgments about good and evil, better and worse through reason, the enlightened ones know that all such judgments are subjective and that ordinary people can no more be trusted with reason than they can with guns. Because ordinary people will pervert reason with ideology, religion, or interest, science is "science" only in the "right" hands. Consensus among the right people is the only standard of truth. Facts and logic matter only insofar as proper authority acknowledges them.That is why the ruling class is united and adamant about nothing so much as its right to pronounce definitive, "scientific" judgment on whatever it chooses." The above from an article entitled, "America's Ruling Class -- and the Perils of Revolution,." located at: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print Platt 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
