[Michael] you have no place to judge whether or not I can or cannot proclaim something about a God you can't manage to distinguish from a leprechaun.
[Arlo] See, that's just it. Your "God" has no more, and no less, reality than a leprechaun. Certainly the collective stories are larger, as a novel contains more than an essay or comic strip. This is like saying "you can't distinguish between Batman and Superman". Sure, one wears a blue suit and the other drives a black car. My point is that BOTH are mythological traditions evolved over time from humankind's experience in the world, and BOTH are clothed in the local costumes, habits, expressions of the people who's narration provides the cross-generational latching of these stories. In this sense, both are "dialogic", they do not exist in isolation but are part of a cultural dialogue, like a voice in a play, that is in response to, and anticipation of, the lines surrounding it. [Michael] that nothing quality can come from religion, let alone theism. [Arlo] I have never said this. In fact I said the opposite. As I said, Leprechaunism may induce someone to assist old ladies to cross busy streets (a good thing), but this does not mean that everything about Leprechaunism should be unquestioningly accepted. Nor does it mean that we need Leprechaunism or else old ladies would be smooshed by traffic. It means that we can, from a higher vantage, ask what it is about Leprechaunism and other mythologies that seems to call for assistive behavior towards one's fellow human-beings. [Michael] My point is that the only way humanity can ever move past religion, and theism for that matter is through Dynamic quality within religion, within that cultural context. [Arlo] I disagree. I think the only way humanity will move past religion is by stepping back (as I've been suggesting) and consider the Myths of Mankind from an bird's eye view, to learn to see them all as paintings pointing towards the Void, and not be so concerned with the "reality" of any one. In this same way, the Mythos is not only theism but also the myriad of stories, heroes, legends, deeds and trials that fill our libraries and our languages. It is like asking "what is love?", and expecting a total answer in one book. We see glimpses of love in the smallest child's fairy tale and the lengthiest Dostoevsky novel, in the oral stories of the Lakota to the modern cyberpunk internet novellas. Rather than saying, "in which book is the real love described", we say "if you want to know what love is, read and experience as many of these as you can and you will start to see the direction of your gaze moving around the same unseeable vortex." And there are dangers to exclusiveness. Certainly "love" is a strong theme in Anne Rice's Vampire Lestat, but if that was your ONLY descriptor of love, think how much you'd miss? In the same way, think about how much you'd miss if that wasn't part of your experience? [Michael] And by not understanding that context to the degree you, or dmb seem to do, how will you ever recognize quality within its ranks? [Arlo] I recognize Quality by the deeds of others. But I do not make the mistake of thinking of that those deeds would only exist but for theism. Just as I can recognize the goodness of helping old ladies across busy streets, I see the promise of a pot o' gold to be low quality. [Arlo previously] Does "man" continue to need a "God" to control him or give his life meaning? [Michael] I believe this is the case, rather emphatically, actually. I believe I have been rummaging in this can (arriving at this conclusion) from the outset and it is what is guiding my reaction to the attacks on theism. [Arlo] Well, you may be right. I say this because the cynic in me sees that the larger metaphoric, esoteric, analogous perspective seems to be losing ground to the many literal, nationalistic and exclusive traditions. To use the old metaphor, the Age of Pisces is not over, we are still perhaps several generations away from the Age of Aquarius. (Sidenote, the dawn of Christianity (the Piscean fish) can be seen in contrast to the Age of Taurus which it followed, the story of Moses demolishing the bull may be part of a historical mythological tradition describing the changing world ages) [Michael] I acknowledge that theism (as a term used per its 'official' definition as I insist) is in fact culturally based. But as such IMO it still remains a culturally relevant understanding of Pirsig's Quality from a lower Pirsigian evolutionary level. [Arlo] I don't think anyone here denies the importance of the Mythos. [Michael] However, having made this recognition, (theism being culturally based) it must be acknowledged that as such it is thus also shown to be something one cannot extract, remove, abolish or eliminate from culture without doing the same (or something else) to the culture which generates it as a concept in the first place. [Arlo] Again, I am not talking about eliminating the specific theistic intepretations, I am talking about elevating one's vision to see them as metaphors in the human museum. I think its a trap of SOM to say "this story is right, and this story is wrong". The MOQ would say, "this story is better", and moreso it allows us to ask "better how?" and "worse how?", to unconcern ourselves with names and labels and such and see which stories work in what ways (and which fail in what ways). [Michael] So... you can't get rid of theism while culture hasn't moved to the point where it sheds it of its own accord. [Arlo] No, of course not. But as Platt is fond of saying, a culture changes one person at a time. A few hundred years back, the freedoms secular humanism has brought us were unimaginable. But the seeds of that change were there, and grew over time and spread throughout the collective consciousness and bore fruit. Pirsig's ZMM rode a cultural wave of change, and I have no doubt there will be others. 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/
