Case asked Kevin: How in the world has rationality had tragic effects on human relationships?
Kevin replied: The repression of strong feelings is a choice of rationality over feelings. When strong feelings are repressed they will fester. This can lead to innapropriate expression with tragic consequences. My sense is that Seung-Hui Cho chose rationality over feelings. And I'd guess that he thought he was in control of his feelings. dmb butts in: As I understand it, Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents" spells out the MOQ's idea of an evolutionary relationship between the biological and social levels. Basically, Freud says that society demands that we tame our instincts and passions, that civilzation couldn't exist without some repression of the organism. Usually, this means laws that control sex and violence. But then Pirsig draws another line, one that Freud did not. The MOQ's fourth level, where rationality properly belongs, has a similar evolutionary relationship going with society except that this time society is the one to be tamed. This is where Socratic doubt comes in, the ability and the willingness to question tradition, to scrutinize authority, to critically examine the values of your culture. In fact, in Pirsig's critique of 20th century intellectuals, he complains that they failed to realize the important function that social level morality plays and saw this repression as arbitrary and un-necessary. If memeory serves, Pirsig mentions the popularity of Meade's "Coming of Age in Samoa" in the early part of the 20th century. People seemed to love the idea that sexual practices could be so free. If its good enough for those islanders, they said to the flapper girl at the speakeasy, let's get it on. The "free love" thing tends to be associated with hippies, but they was more like the culmination of a thing that had been let out of the bottle by intellectuals long before them. And I've recently discovered that a kind of philosophical hedonism can be detected in a lot of the 20th continental philosophers too, including Freud. I forget the details, but was reading the other day about European thinker who views the orgasm as a profoundly spiritual event, quite literally confusing biological quality with Dynamic Quality. He thinks its deep but its just basic. _________________________________________________________________ Need a break? Find your escape route with Live Search Maps. http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?ss=Restaurants~Hotels~Amusement%20Park&cp=33.832922~-117.915659&style=r&lvl=13&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=1118863&encType=1&FORM=MGAC01 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
