dmb said to Jan:
According to the MOQ, fame and fortune are social level values. According to
the MOQ, our recent history is a clash of values, namely social level values as
opposed to intellectual values.
Jan replied:
...I don't have access to the english version, but if you look at ch 17 in
LILA, about page 10 of the chapter, the text following after RMP citing E B
White, you'll find that he (RMP) says something like this in english:
"The MOQ gives the vocabulary. A free market is a dynamic institution. What
people buy and sell, what people values, can never be included in an
intellectual formula. Dynamic quality makes the market work. The market is
perpetually in change and can never be predicted."
Therefore, according to MOQ: Economics is nothing without values. I'd
appreciate if someone could give me the correct sentences in english.
dmb says:
Here's the quote, along with some surrounding context. As you anyone can see,
economics is central to the political clash between social and intellectual
values.
"That’s what neither the socialists nor the capitalists ever got figured out.
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. That’s what gives socialism its
drive. But what the socialists left out and what has all but killed their whole
undertaking is an absence of a concept of indefinite Dynamic Quality. You go to
any socialist city and it’s always a dull place because there’s little Dynamic
Quality.
On the other hand the conservatives who keep trumpeting about the virtues of
free enterprise are normally just supporting their own self-interest. They are
just doing the usual cover-up for the rich in their age-old exploitation of the
poor. Some of them seem to sense there is also something mysteriously virtuous
in a free enterprise system and you can see them struggling to put it into
words but they don’t have the metaphysical vocabulary for it any more than the
socialists do.
The metaphysics of Quality provides the vocabulary. A free market is a Dynamic
institution. What people buy and what people sell, in other words what people
value, can never be contained by any intellectual formula. What makes the
marketplace work is Dynamic Quality. The market is always changing and the
direction of that change can never be predetermined.
The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes everybody richer by
preventing static economic patterns for setting in and stagnating economic
growth. That is the reason major capitalist economies of the world have done so
much better since World War II that the major socialist economies. 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. 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." (Lila, 17)
other relevant quotes from PIRSIG:
"a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social
values is absolutely superior to one that does not."
"And this is a war in which intellect, to end the paralysis of society, has to
know whose side it is on, and support that side, and never undercut it."
"Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over society, were
confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program for the social
control of intellect."
"The gigantic power of socialism and fascism, which have overwhelmed this
century, is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This conflict
explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane search for power but
as an all-consuming glorification of social authority and hatred of
intellectualism. His anti-Semitism was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His
hatred of communists was fueled by anti-intellectualism. His exaltation of the
German volk was fueled by it. His fanatic persecution of any kind of
intellectual freedom was driven by it. In the United States the economic and
social upheaval was not so great as in Europe, but Franklin Roosevelt and the
New Deal, nevertheless, became the center of a lesser storm between social and
intellectual forces."
"...In a subject-object understanding of the world these terms have no meaning.
There is no such thing as "human rights." There is no such thing as moral
reasonableness. There are subjects and objects and nothing else. ..This soup
of sentiments about logically nonexistent entities can be straightened out by
the Metaphysics of Quality. It says that what is meant by "human rights" is
usually the moral code of intellect-vs-society, the moral right of intellect to
be free of social control. Freedom of speech; freedom of assembly, of travel;
trial by jury; habeas corpus; government by consent—these "human rights" are
all intellect-vs-society issues. According to the Metaphysics of Quality these
"human rights" have not just a sentimental basis, but a rational, metaphysical
basis. They are essential to the evolution of a higher level of life from a
lower level of life. They are for real."
QUOTES from Wikipedia:
"Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and mistrust of intellect,
intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of
education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical and
contemptible."
"Anti-intellectualism is a common facet of totalitarian dictatorships to
oppress political dissent. The Nazi party's populist rhetoric featured
anti-intellectual rants as a common motif, including Adolf Hitler's political
polemic, Mein Kampf."
"Critics have alleged that much of the prevailing philosophy in American
academia (i.e., postmodernism, poststructuralism, relativism) are
anti-intellectual: 'The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter
by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives
is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and
pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time'.”
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
