Platt asked: Was Pirsig intellectually lazy and dishonest in generalizing that capitalism was superior to socialism?
dmb says: Is Platt being intellectually lazy and dishonest in reporting what Pirsig says about capitalism and socialism? Yes, very lazy and very dishonest. I've had to balance out his selective reading of the text dozens of times. The following quotes not only put major qualifications on Pirsig's positive statements about capitalism, they reflect the overall thrust of the MOQ's moral hierarchy much better. The evolutionary morality is all about movement toward higher and higher values. And with respect to politics in particular, the danger is that society won't be intellectually guided and we will instead drift back to the last static latch, those social level Victorian values. Today's free-market Republicans ARE those neo-Victorians that Pirsig warns us about. The tea baggers, the corporate whores, the religious right, the authoritarians and family values moralists are the various stars in a constellation called backwards. Whose side are you on? What values do you want in our society? Is there something about the phrase "more moral" or "absolutely superior" that confuses you? Pirsig said: "...a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social values is absolutely superior to one that does not." (Lila, p.311) "From a static point of view, socialism is more moral than capitalism. It's a higher form of evolution. It is an intellectually guided society, not just a society that is guided by mindless traditions." "It is not that Victorian social economic patterns are more moral than socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite. They are less moral as static patterns go." 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
