[DMB] But some merely use the quips and quotes that seem to validate them. I don't what that's called, but it ain't the love of wisdom and I can only see the most common and crude value in that; ego"
[Ant] I fully agree with Dave here. I would just add that some of these latter ego driven people primarily just like the attention. [Arlo] You two are so naive. ;-) See, I think its often a bit more insidious than simple ego or attention. For example, it was painfully obvious from his many posts that, for Bo, "SOL" was a means to elevate Euro-Christian culture as morally superior to those inferior dark-skinned Muslims. Remember that, in this formulation, "Christianity" became an intellectual-level pattern, while "Islam" was an- INFERIOR- social-level pattern. That entire endeavor was predicated on a desire to demonstrate why his culture and it's (ostensibly) dominate religion were morally superior to others. Remember that this is a guy who felt the MOQ provided moral authority to criminalize wearing a hijab. Platt, in a similar vein, had a two-fold agenda. At times his MOQ was altered to be "inorganic-biological-social-individual" as a way of denouncing whatever collectivist boogeyman Fox was warning about that particular week. At other times, his Fox-fueled rage at the media and academia led him to condemn intellect as "SOL" as a means of demoting it dominance over society. In this regard, he promoted the SOL as a way of ensuring that society should not follow intellectual principles (this was the guy that once said to me he supported a state's right to make interracial marriage illegal). In both ways, the SOL served to ensure that white-conservative values had moral dominance over immigrant-liberal (SOL) values. With Marsha the SOL made strange bedfellows, as it was obvious that for her the SOL gave her a way of rebelling against 'male-dominated' institutions. "Intellect" was, basically, just dumb, boring white males, and the SOL gave her a excuse to ignore whatever 'they' said. This is why Bo, at least, made a token attempt to 'reason' the SOL, even if his reason was always dubious and sophomoric (although laden with delusions of grandeur). Marsha flat out rejected reason itself, and flaunted her incoherence as evidence of moral superiority over all the dumb, boring white males who just didn't 'groove'. For Marsha, Lila was the hero to emulate; Phaedrus was just another stupid man trying to tie her down with reason and intellect. John, well, he's the guy who insists he understands Einstein's Theory of Relativity while at the same time denouncing it for 'ignoring Spacetime'. "Yeah, sure Mr. Einstein, if your Theory of Relativity is so great, then how come you don't account for spacetime?" To which I can only really shake my head and sigh. I think, legitimately, John is stuck in having normalized ZMM's problem space. For him, the division of 'art' and 'science' is natural, and the solution is to keep them functionally separate but kinda slosh them together a bit. When he asked me "would you want a sculptor repairing your motorcycle?" it was one of those bizarre questions that really evidences a gross misunderstanding of Pirsig's entire undertaking. But, of course, that's where the ego comes in, and he simply turns all the evidence of this misunderstanding into proof of his genius. His incoherence, in his mind, is proof only that no one understands his brilliance. "Where is art?"... Indeed, Mr. Einstein, just where is spacetime in your theory, you loser, bow to my genius. In the end, Ant, as Ron White is fond of saying, "you can't fix stupid." 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
