--- In [email protected], Duveyoung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Suddenly I'm getting a laugh outta this credentials challenge. > > In the book "Stranger In A Strange Land," the "not yet enlightened" > character, Valentine Michael Smith, human but raised by an invisible > society of enlightened Martians, is watching monkeys at a zoo who > are beating up on each other. The concept was "shit rolls down > hill," and the big monkey's abuse on a lesser monkey would cause > that lesser monkey to beat up a still smaller monkey, and so on. > > Michael suddenly "got something -- a clarity about suffering" and > began to laugh, and from then on, he was a Kirky badass mofo who > done popped hiz goodsef and wuz a gunna take a run at the world.
Well remembered. That's a really funny moment. It also explains the "pile on" phenomenon, because apes form *groups* of "higher monkeys." > Well, I laugh something like the reverse of that when I considered > the issue of Doc Pete's credentials. Odd, but truthish. It's just the latest incarnation of "I don't like what the person said, so I'll call the person's credibility into question." It was old the first time it was pulled, and doesn't get any younger. > There's no big monkeys here. We're all the same exact size. > > See? Well "seen." A *whole* lot better and more useful "seeing" than some of the pseudo-vedic stuff that goes down here. > There is not a single person here whose opinions have been taken > as gospel by any other person here. Not one. Which makes the attempts to demonize some of them even more ludicrous. The excuse given *for* demonizing them is to (scare quotes ahead) "protect people from being exposed to lies that they might not be aware are lies." As if anyone here needed protecting, and as if those who feel compelled to do so are in any position to be protectors. > Every word seems to have a magnifying glass on it, and the > faintest taint of ego is sniffed out almost instantly. And, > everyone here has this opportunity to have 15 minutes of fame > pretending to be THE BIGGEST MONKEY if they can knock anyone > else off any pedestal of pretense. > > An ashram with no big monkey? Funny, eh? Kinda refreshing, if you ask me. It's *exactly* why people who *get off* on being the Big Monkey (like Bevan and Hagelin and such) don't hang here. They'd try to pull the Big Monkey routine and all of the other monkeys would fling poo at them. :-) > But here's my point: why be concerned about Doc Pete's > accomplishments if it would not make any more intense the > "light of examination" that every post is subjected to? It was merely a way for Nablus to say, "I don't have anything sensible to respond to Pete's post with, so I'll demonize him instead. > Maharishi himself could not post here without the likes > of me taking shots at interpreting and criticizing and > using my POV to batter his POV. Nor could God, in my case, if She deigned to post. > Would I be chiding him on his pretensions of being a gorilla > or be laughing at his use of his banana? I don't even want to *imagine* his use of the banana. The knee-jerk reactions to the well- established talk on the Internet about Benny Creme being gay are a little too closeted for me. > Yeah, and you too, right? Certainly me, too. Even if I *did* pass the Monty Python Self-Defense Course and know how to protect myself from someone wielding a piece of fresh fruit. > If Doc Pete did get his degrees by sending in $20 to a Divinity > Institute, would his words here be any less inspected by us? It sure didn't hurt Johnny Gray's and Barbara De Angelis' popularity. Their degrees came from the University of P.O. Box 2000. On the other hand, Harold Bloomfield had a real medical degree *and* was one of Maharishi's darlings, and look what happened to him. > The impact of his words on us will always be up to us. We > interpret his words based on our immediate understanding of > them and whether or not we resonate with the POV -- not a > single one of us would say, "Well, he's got the credentials, > so I must believe his words." Well, there *is* one of us, someone who bases their "review" of a movie she's never seen on the words of a scholar who didn't even really *watch* the movie he was dumping on, and got major parts of it completely wrong. But he had the credentials, so his "take" on the film were clearly preferable to seeing it oneself and making one's own evaluation. > He could be Professor Emeritus at Harvard, and we'd be taking > pot shots at his concepts, right? *Tim Leary* was once professor emeritus at Harvard if I'm not mistaken, as was his buddy Richard Alpert (Rama Das). That position sure made whatever *they* had to say worth hearing and acting upon, didn't it? > We don respect no stinkeenk bahges. And we tend to laugh when someone flashes one at us. In more mature spiritual circles, it's the counter- part of flashing one's...uh...other kinds of "cred- entials" in public. :-) > If someone is touting credentials as a reason for why we > should just accept his POV, then I think that that issue is > something that can be looked at, but I don't get that Doc > Pete is "handing down from on high" so much as he's shooting > from the hip with his life-wisdom gun. And often with uncanny accuracy. > You know, like ALL OF US ARE DOING. > > I don't see him beating anyone on the head with his credentials. > He's not even rubbing our noses in our opinions that go directly > against established truths of psychology as academia "know it." > We're not scholarly enough to deserve him doing a serious workup > of a concept when we'd be unwilling to educate ourselves enough > to be in the debate. > > If he goes to his bookshelf and starts citing chapter and verse > about any psychological phenomenon, look out! -- home work will > be required. Nonsense. People will just Google it or read the Wikipedia entry, and consider themselves more than prepared enough to start an argument. :-) > Which is to say, we're got a wild west shoot 'em up here, and no > sheriff in sight. Real Deadwood stuff. I like it. > I'm tellin' ya, it's funny here! Very funny. It'd be even funnier if someone were foolish enough to dispute your insights, but I'm laughing too hard to really work one up right now. Give it time...I'm sure someone will fling some poo your way. Meanwhile, don't bogart those bananas, dude...pass some of them over here.
