Andre: Thank you Krimel for responding. I have had difficulties with this as well. Pirsig really brought it home to me when he said, from his balcony in NY (I think) the 'magic' words: how you look at all this stuff, all these goings on, and how you judge them depends on your own static patterns. The extent to which you are willing to let go of the static patterns (in your persuit of DQ) will depend on how much 'pain' / uncertainty, you are willing to endure. It also depends on how much pleasure you are willing to endure without feeling guilty (among so much misery and low quality). This will be the guilt-tripping/ no- hopers people who will suggest you are selfish!
[Krimel] As I told Marsha, what we do is a function of three things. Biology is the inherited memory of experience of every single one of our ancestors, from Mom and Dad to some ancient chain of proteins. I am the current incarnation of a process that has been continuous for the past four billion years. The memory of my ancestors is encoded in DNA and it assembles itself into an organism; a living thing equipped by the trials and errors on my species to interact effectively with the world I arise within. Each of us builds our lives around these natural abilities and out interactions in the world around us. We are equipped with memory that lets us encode our personal experience and recall it. Those encoded experiences are labeled in memory as good or bad, similar and dissimilar. We apply those concepts to our present perceptions. We call this collection of remembered experiences our personal history and it influences our present actions. Finally our current behavior is a response to the present environment. Without a present environment there is nothing to respond and nothing to respond to. And so Biology, personal history and current environment are the trinity that give rise to our actions. The philosopher/psychologist Jean Piaget claimed that our personal history forms into schemas. These are conceptual frameworks. They are, as you would have it, static conceptual patterns. Piaget said that we assimilate new experiences into these schema. We see something new and we fit it into our conceptual framework. Or he says we accommodate our conceptual framework to fit with new perceptions. When Pirsig talks about the platypus he is giving an example of accommodation. This newly discovered creature could not be assimilated into the existing conceptual taxonomy of biology. As a result the taxonomy was altered to accommodate the new species. This did not mean that we scrapped the entire conceptual hierarchy of living things rather that we altered the hierarchy to fit the new data. In either case, assimilation or accommodation, we use conceptual hierarchies to reduce uncertainty and the pain it causes. We feel better when things fit together. [Andre] Without wanting to evoke a continuation of the theistic discussion,(I don't!) but this is a theme that lies behing the words attributed to e.g. Jesus: If you want to follow me, reject your father, mother, brothers and sisters. Give your wealth to the poor...etc, etc. These are the most powerfull static patterns that binds one to one's existential reality. And here is a bloke saying that this reality is illusory. And I agree. He also said : Know Thyself'. The most powerful and least quoted words in the practice of churchianity. They are what it is all about. [Krimel] I have no problem with a theistic discussion. In fact I think some of the anti-theists here are just theists in denial. They want to claim that particles are volitional and that life pervades to inorganic. Perhaps there is a distinction between the claim that the universe is conscious and intentional and the claim that there is a God. I don't see a difference. Obviously, some do. But you make a point here that I think is a throwback to something I said that really pissed you off. I disparaged what I considered to be so nonsensical aspects of oriental theology. My point was that for many, oriental thinking is appealing because they are looking at a refined version of it. They focus on its more profound aspects and exclude the gibberish. And yet when they talk about western theology they focus solely on the gibberish and ignore the more profound deeper understandings. To compare two ideas by focusing on the best of one and the worst of the other hardly seems reasonable to me. With your quote above, you are pointing to one of profound ideas that is common to both. There are lots of such points in common. And both are also loaded with nonsense. Babies and bathwater all the way down. 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/
