What DMB always leaves out (for obvious reasons) is that Pirsig, after
saying all that about the intellectual superiority of socialism (a debatable
point because capitalism gets plenty of intellectual heft from Adam Smith to
F.A. Hayek to Milton Friedman) concludes with:
"What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists,
reasoning intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the door
to Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling of things. They closed it
because the metaphysical structure of their objectivity never told them
Dynamic Quality exists."
Free-enterprise system superior! Get it?
I know left-wingnuts like DMB can never bring themselves to admit it, as his
diatribe below so vividly illustrates. But, there it is -- an undeniable
conclusion. Any other spin is truly intellectually dishonest.
Platt
----- Original Message -----
From: "david buchanan" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] The Moral Landscape
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."
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