Squad, I thought I sent this message two or three days ago but I just discovered that I had addressed it incorrectly. David B and squad, I am including David's entire recent post although I am really replying to the previous discussion about the dropping of the Abomb on Japan at the end of World War 11. David says: Hi Glenn, Tor and all: If there were such a thing as a fifth level, we would NOT be able to make sense of it with our intellect, just as the social level doesn't recognize intellectual values, just as hunger doesn't care about table manners. The recent "conversation" between Glenn and Tor represents a critical issue. (Funding the cyclotron) I think Tor is not only right, but his view was practically demonstrated. Glenn's apparent wish to dismiss the intellectual level itself was supported by an "embarrassing" and illogical argument. (Nothing personal here Glenn. And I'm honestly sorry if it stings.) I've seen too much of such "reasoning", especially in the other forum. And this is not just a way of insulting the intelligence of those who don't see things the way I do, although it may have that effect. I bring this up because I think it demonstrates the axiom that a level can't really see the one above it. Its probably more like the higher level values "don't matter" and are not appreciated by lower levels., but the basic idea is the same. Let me use some un-named individuals from the other forum as an example. Hopefully this will prevent the debate from getting too personal and/or over-heated. We'd been discussing the MOQ morality of Hirsoshima when I pointed out that it was simply against the law, that the bombing violated legal principles (Int PoVs) that the US had already adopted by 1945. I'd said that Truman ignored those principles, either willfully or through a genuine lack of knowledge, in deciding to drop the big one. The crux of the argument was that Truman based his act on social level values that were contradicted by higher intellectual values and was therefore immoral. (Although I don't think we need a whole need metaphysics to conclude that indiscriminate killing of civilians is immoral.) There were several people who posted their disagreements, using mostly emotional patriotism as a defence. And none of those who sought to defend Truman ever even mentioned the crux of the argument. Everyone one of them ignored the laws and principles, just as Truman himself had. It was as if those ideas were invisible to them. It was as if I'd never said anything about it at all. Perhaps there was no good reply and so they chose to dance around it. Maybe they really didn't understand what I was saying. It could be that they know perfectly well what I'm talking about, but choose to "pretend" otherwise for some reason. What ever the case, they obviously find no value in the intellectual principles involved, or think such values shouldn't even be involved in the first place, or they simply don't see the difference between the 3rd and 4th levels. Sure, its frustrating to have such a conversation, but that's not really the point. This blindless isn't so much about intelligence, but values and attitudes. (Although one of them also requested that we all limit our vocabulary to words with five letters or less because he was dhaving trouble following along and he also said Hitler wasn't so bad, just overly ambitious, so I guess you could say plain old stupidity is culprit in some cases.) And I'm not suggesting that intellectuals ought to return the favor by ignoring the value of social patterns, quite the contrary. What I'm objecting to is the very idea of anti-intellectual philosophers. Not only does philosophy require a competent intellect, Pirsig's philosophy puts intellectual values at the top and at the cutting edge of evolution, insisting that they rule in cases of conflict with the social level. I think its not just a matter of being correct, according to the MOQ I think anti-intellectual philosphers are actually degenerate, at least in a certain sense. If Pirsig is right, and I think he is, then the history of the 20th century is explained by the conflict between the social and intellectual levels. And that struggle still goes on to this day, even in this forum, no? Again, I'm gringing this up not to hurt anyone's feelings, but it seems this struggle has a very real effect this forum, which is in our common interest. I don't think there are any answers or solutions to this problem. What can we do, impose some kind of intellectual litmus test? That's not too likely and it wouldn't even be wise. I'm breaking some windows here, but its only because there are flames and smoke billowing out of the house. DMB Clark says: While I don't think that it makes much difference to the discussion I would like to point out that Pirsig's MoQ had not been heard of during WW11 so using the MoQ terms to base a WW11 argument on is a little disingenious. David says: We'd been discussing the MOQ morality of Hirsoshima when I pointed out that it was simply against the law, that the bombing violated legal principles (Int PoVs) that the US had already adopted by 1945. I'd said Clark says: I believe that it is not illegal to take someone else's life if he is clearly and immediately trying to take yours. If we can agree that the entire population of Japan was intimately and actively prepared to enter the war as combatants then your argument against bombing innocent civilians does not apply. According to our information the entire population of Japan, military and civilian alike, had been organized to defend against a land invasion. Even 12 and 14 year old kids who volunteered were to be outfitted with explosives and sent against the invaders. Sneaky, self guided missles so to speak. This was probably a worst case scenario since the Japanese fleet was pretty well wiped out and they had been hit hard. On 14 Aug over Japanese 1000 soldiers attacked the imperial palace to prevent the surrender message from going out. In any case the projections were that 2 million lives on both sides would be lost in a land invasion. The total war had already cost 55 million lives. In Hiroshima the first bomb killed 92,233 people and wounded 37,425. In Nagasaki the second bomb killed 23,753 dead and 43,020 wounded. These figures come from a book named "2194 Days of War" and are probably pretty accurate. So, we can see that the dropping of the bombs was clearly moral in Pirsig's terms since probably more civilians than this would have been killed in a land invasion. This was not "indiscriminate killing of civilians". The decision was based on the lesser of two evils and was in accordance with Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality. David, your problem is that you have a skewed view of history based on the current conditions that obtain in the world. Many presumably innocent civilians are getting kicked around in the world today and I totally agree that we should not use the bomb to try to straighten these conditions out. We can apply Pirsig's morality as far back as we can see provided we are sufficiently aware of the totality of the conditions obtaining at the time. It makes me wonder what happens to history when it is so far in the past that there is nobody left to remember what happened. Ken Clark MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
