Wow! or
Religion doesn't have Quality, Quality has Religion... Nice post thanks--mel ----- Original Message ----- From: "david buchanan" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 4:13 PM Subject: Re: [MD] Christendom's place in the MOQ I'd like to take issue with the "anti-theistic mindset of Pirsig and his followers", as Ham put it. To say that "Christendom has no place in the MoQ" is a bit like saying the European Middle Age has no place in the MOQ. "Christendom" is a social, political and historical fact. But it is true that "faith" (belief without empirical reasons) is considered to be of low-quality. In that sense, the MOQ is anti-theistic. The principles of Radical Empiricism will not allow assertions about anything that is beyond experience, that can't be known in experience, and so rejects any kind of "metaphysical" or supernatural entities as such. But Ham rightly points out that "this is not to say that spirituality is not a central element of Pirsig's thesis", although I don't think it is anything "disguised" about it. Nor do I think the MOQ is "a philosophy that is flawed by the separation of the individual from the universe." Quite the opposite. Pirsig's central enemy (SOM) is heavily implicated in that separation and the MOQ's philosophical mysticism is actually the antidote to that separation. (Thou Art That) Further, experience is NOT "man's only acknowledged link to universal existence". (Assume "universal existence" is a fancy way to say "universe".) In the MOQ experience is not a LINK TO reality. Experience IS reality. And finally, its not true that "the MoQ dismisses the essential nature of the individual". It does, however, dismiss the Cartesian self because of the way it sets up the separation between objective reality and the subjective mind, which is apparently a lot like Ham's "free, value-sensible agent". In a nutshell, I think Ham doesn't understand the problem (SOM) or the solution (MOQ). It is no accident that SOM and theism go hand in hand. Descartes' Cogito is basically a secular soul, an entity distinct from the physical realm and without extension. And so it's not surprising that Ham's essentialism is essentially a mixture of SOM theism with a little dash of rationalism. It's Cartesian enough to be considered part of the problem that the MOQ is meant to solve. That's why he is at odds with all of the most crucial elements, including the alternative conception of the self (ego as little self and Big Self) and the related mystical dimension. A brief discussion of the connection between Jesus and Buddha would be one way to explain this kind of mysticism. I guess we'll never know if Jesus visited India, learned about Buddhism from someone who had and what. I think the similarities between them can be explained psychologically and there doesn't need to be any geographic or scholarly connections. As every Joseph Campbell fan knows, Jesus and Buddha are like a thousand other heroes. And they're just like us too. They stand as examples of what we must all do. Take the journey and see for yourself in your own experience. Don't take it on faith and don't confuse intellectual descriptions with the experience itself. Mystical reality is not something you believe in so much as something you go through, suffer and enjoy. This is the essence of the reason for rejecting faith based beliefs, theism, theocracy and tradition in favor of an empirically-based world view. Obviously, this is not the empiricism of the positivists insofar as it fully accepts these so-called "subjective" experiences as real, just as real as rocks and rain. These are psychological facts, if you will. And the idea here is that all the world's religions are based on these psychological facts, they all grow out of these kinds of experiences. In that sense, the MOQ doesn't reject religion so much as it ranks the original experience over the social and political institutions and the mere professions of faith. Christendom's place in the MOQ is within the social level of static quality while mystical experience is Dynamic and part of the process of human growth and transformation. If a religion is healthy and functioning its system of rituals and symbols precipitate this experience in those who take part, but in our postmodern, technological world they no longer function. Our world is too loud and so it drowns out the whispering voices of myth and we hardly know how to read the symbols. Thus the rise of fundamentalism, literalism and fanaticism. These forms of theism are so far removed from actual religious experience that it's hard to see any connection at all. They're just ego-driven political movements. dmb _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/howitworks?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t1_allup_howitworks_0120 09 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/ 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/
