Hey SA, Matt said: For instance, Bo thinks he has gotten to the core of reality and dialectically shown the superiority of his position to all and that I am protecting my pride (because he assumes that I have seen his superiority, too) when I tell him I can't converse with him. I don't think it's my pride, but I am protecting my time and energy. I just can't figure out any more new ways, after a very long and extensive engagement with him a couple years ago, to articulate to him my thoughts about his philosophy and interpretation of Pirsig. I feel strongly that it is partly Bo's peculiar way of composing himself in dialogue that leads to blockage (which is why my confession of lack of new ideas comes attached to my feeling that it's partly his own fault that some people can't converse with him), but the bottom line is that I only continue conversations where I feel like something interesting will pop out, either on my side or on someone else's. I don't know how other people decide to spend their time on the MD, but I suspect many have that sentiment in the back of their minds (though I think others just like to argue).
SA said: Matt, Bo will not understand and Ham will not understand somebody else, because for them it is not how other people philosophize and how these ways of understanding reality will come to some more mutual understanding. Not a mutual understanding that even has to synthesize the two or more perspectives (theirs and whoever else's), but simply trying to understand where the other person is coming from. Notice, I've mentioned a quite a number of times that what Bo and Ham say, at times, is similar to what I say and I'll point it out as commonalities to bridge understanding, but their not looking for understanding. Their looking for tyranny. It's their way or the highway as the saying goes. I've pointed out Ham's honesty that he's speaking from a thesis he made-up, which Ham's thesis is seriously Ham's thesis for I don't know one person that knows Ham's thesis as Ham does, and sometimes it seems Ham doesn't know his own or his own can't reach out and understand something. Bo tries to take over the moq for his own and he explicitly rids Pirsig from Pirsig's moq on an every other day experience. Well, many probably know this here, and still many try to discuss with them to only repeat the same cycle. it is only about how they will explain their philosophy and if you don't get their philosophy, well, it's due to it being their philosophy and we have ours and they don't want to think about 'ours'. Matt: Yeah, I think that's basically the way I feel. I've never thought Ham was as inconversable as Bo, but I also haven't been very intrigued by Ham's point of view. He seems to be here to mainly talk to someone about Essentialism because he apparently can't find anyone else. Which is fine, but not my thing. The funny thing I've always thought about Bo is that from what I understand of his position, it is a bit more interesting than what other people write about Pirsig here. It's different and distinctive. (On the other hand, he hasn't really said anything new or added to it in years.) And in some cases we agree on certain things. Bo will occasionally pass a comment or two my way, and some of it I'll quite agree with, but it just doesn't make any difference in talking: he wildly misconstrues everything, either when we are in agreement or when we disagree. It is quite fascinating in a certain way, how it doesn't really matter what one says. So I just stopped. Occasionally, I even feel the desire to use Bo as a foil because he has the virtue of having worked out a fairly coherent position at least kind of extensively, but I don't because I fear Bo's subsequent comments will cause people to misunderstand what I was saying. That's actually the biggest reason I say nothing any more: he's so bad with other people, I think he ends up propagating misunderstanding to others. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Make Windows Vista more reliable and secure with Windows Vista Service Pack 1. http://www.windowsvista.com/SP1?WT.mc_id=hotmailvistasp1banner 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/
