dmb,

You said to Ian,


On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 5:22 PM, david <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> Anti-intellectualism, on the other hand, is quite real. It has a long
> history. It is a central feature of fascist regimes and has found many
> various expression in American history.


Sure,  As described in Lila:


"From World War II until the seventies the intellectuals continued to
dominate, but
with an increasing challenge - call it the "Hippie revolution," - which
failed.
And from the early seventies on there has been a slow confused mindless
drift back to a kind of pseudo - Victorian moral posture accompanied by an
unprecedented and unexplained growth in crime.

Of these periods, the last two seem the most misunderstood. The Hippies
have been interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the period
following their departure as a "return to values," whatever that means.
The Metaphysics of Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie
revolution was the moral movement. The present period is the collapse of
values.

The Hippie revolution of the eighties was a moral revolution against both
society and intellectuality. It was a whole new social phenomenon no
intellectual had predicted and no intellectuals were able to explain. It
was a revolution by children of well-to-do, college - educated, "modern"
people of the world who suddenly turned upon their parents and their
schools and their society with a hatred no one could have believed existed.
This was not any new paradise the intellectuals of the twentieth century
were trying to achieve by freedom from Victorian restraints. This was
something else that had blown up in their faces"


dmb:



> To dismiss such a concern as a bogus debating tactic is to ignore many
> pages of Pirsig's work, whole chapters even.
>
> If there is a good reason to think the criticism is unfounded, that's one
> thing. But anti-intellectualism is one of the most salient features of the
> conflict between social and intellectual values, personally, culturally and
> politically. If you have something intelligent to say about that, Ian, I'd
> be glad to hear it. But I think your drive-by arguments aren't hitting any
> targets and they're very unbecoming to you.
>

J:  Maybe Ian is just trying to be succinct.  I'm willing to spend more
time murdering your position than a mere drive-by spray of bullet points.
.  In fact, Pirsig's post above, stabs your words in the heart.  He says
that  sometimes anti-intellectualism is good.   You prat on about fascism
as anti-intellectual but there's a very intellectualized attempt at social
control going on there.  Freedom is key.  Freedom to think whatever you
want to think (intellectual) AND do whatever you want to do (social)  but
when intellectuals want to be in control, anti-intellectualism is moral.

John
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