Simon,
Pirsig never says human beings ARE intellectual Quality, he simply says that
they are a PART of it because they are 'collections of thoughts.' So if you
are talking about sacrificing humans in the Revolutionary War, which of
course was fought for independence, this is moral because humans (mostly
biological Quality, partly intellectual) are dying for a pure, noble idea
like independence. Vietnam was fought because of the Truman doctrine of the
50's, which basically said that the US will prevent the spread of communism
no matter where it is. The whole idea of the Vietnam war was simply stopping
the spread of a government which we had irrational negative connotations
with. That's not a high Quality idea in my book, i dont know about yours.
And if it is, it's nowhere near as high as the idea of independence. that
brings me to the next thing you said, about morality being entirely
subjective. when you cite the Pinochet situation, and argue that his
morality is different from ours, and that he might be moral in his decisions,
even though we find them atrocious (forgive me if i put a barrel of words in
your mouth), that's just like the boy who says, 'how do we know the sky is
really blue? what if it's really green and we're all colorblind and see it
blue?' There's no rational argument against that; it has to be assumed that
we, as a society, can tell the difference between good and evil, for the most
part, but especially in cases like Pinochet's. and didn't he kill innocent
people, who are biological organims as well as a part of intellectual
Quality? anyway, i just think you need to do a little more investigating
before you dismiss Pirsig like that.
rasheed
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