Dear Ham
As far back as 18. July.
I had said:
> > Not that I knew any SOM, it was the mind/matter abyss,
> > ourselves as isolated minds fundamentally alienated from other minds and
> > - most of all - from reality, only approaching "it" by way of theories,
> > that however close only were subjective descriptions of an enigmatic
> > something. I knew the impossibility of this dualism, but it did not
> > alleviate my oppression, it merely looked like an added sadistic game
> > that existence played with us.
Ham:
> How did you know "the impossibility of this dualism"? Such knowledge
> could not have arisen from the experience of an "alienated mind".
> Certainly empirical evidence contradicts that conclusion. It must have
> been either a personal intuition or your exposure to idealistic
> philosophers. Whatever the source of this "dilemma", its resolution has
> obviously become your personal challenge.
I compare myself with young Phaedrus, he was submerged in an
"intellectual" time - reason ruled - yet he saw the impossibility of
reason from reason's premises. I had not arrived at something as
advanced as his
"The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given
phenomenon is infinite" (page 107)
but had nevertheless had my own insight of the fundament of reason
giving way beneath me and when I first read this "infinite number of
hypotheses .." passage it hit me like lightning as did the talks on
Newton. So I will very much claim that insights (not knowledge) about
reason's "impossibility" can arise from an alienated mind - ONLY from
it can it arise. .
> This is a bit over the edge. The Yin and Yang of Taoism is a way of
> resolving the duality of nature by seeking balance between its polar
> opposites.
The point is that I - like P. - was totally submerged in SOM or Reason,
I could not fathom any realty beyond the mind/matter, that's the point. I
had read Alan Watts for example but he made no sense ... those wool-
headed Orientals had just not seen REASON! - it was not until Pirsig I
understood what Watts may have meant.
> Classical Idealism is a belief that the only existing
> substance is mental. Phenomenalism is the theory that representations
> (or sense data) are all that exist. Then, of course, there is pure
> objectivism which states that mind, values and ideas are all
> derivatives of matter. These are all monistic worldviews predating
> Pirsig's MoQ and Priday's Essentialism.
If young Hamilton went around flaunting sentences like this you must
have been quite a prodigy. I only knew that existence had been split
along the mind/matter "fault" and even if I lived in a world full of
sounds, smells, colors, tastes ... these were subjective (which spells
illusory in SOM). Had I not been so mercilessly "rational" (using
intelligence from reason's premises) I may like my contemporaries
have enjoyed life.
> Another misconception (in my opinion) is your insistence on the
> evolutionary development of intellectual ideas as if they were
> "existents", as, for example:
> > Most revealing for me was the section on how SOM emerged with
> > the old Greeks, IT HAD NOT EXISTED as SOM itself wants us
> > to believe "always, just for the Greeks to discover".
> Whatever the essence of Reality, it doesn't change simply because someone,
> at some particular time, posits it as a metaphysical thesis. Newton
> didn't "invent" gravity, nor did Einstein create relativity, nor is SOM
> Pirsig's conversion of subject/object duality. Theories merely
> reinterpret reality; they don't change it.
Young Ham may have known the correct context from the outset, but
young Bo thought the mind/matter fault went all the way down, no
undivided essential reality somewhere. This was why ZAMM's about
SOM having entered history was such a relief.
On Newton and Einstein you reveal that you don't understand the
MOQ, that you always have been safely within SOM's or intellect's
perimeter. Lucky fellow!
> However, I enjoyed reading 'Bodvar's Odyssey' and appreciated the
> opportunity to get a first-hand account of your struggle. I think we can
> all relate to your experience.
Thank you Ham, I read your story with great interest, may comment it .
some day, you and I aren't "twitters"
Bodvar
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