Hi Joe,
You've snipped a bit of a post of mine and pasted a post of Matt's.
I'm not sure what your point was in doing so. Do you see Matt's post
as answering mine? Can you explain how?
Best,
Steve
On Sep 21, 2009, at 4:38 PM, Joseph Maurer wrote:
On Monday 21 September 2009 11.54 AM “Steve Peterson” wrote:
<snip>
If belief is a habit of action, as the pragmatists say, is all action
best described as some belief? Is faith--the aspect of faith that
does not concern factual belief--something that could benefit from a
pragmatist's re-describing now that religion fails to speak to so
many of us?
<snip>
On Thursday 17 September 2009 11:21 PM “Matt Kundert” wrote:
Logos (word) is ergon (deed).
Maybe that's why, Ron, you've always seemed to me to avoid
pragmatism, which
has at its heart the notion that our word is a deed. As J. L.
Austin once
said, "our word is our bond." One might deplore these ephemeral links
holding up these magical towers in the sky called "culture" and
"ego," like
Andre, but without our word being a deed, an act with consequences,
then all
of this goes away--no computer, no books, no words, no thought, no
humanity,
no humans. It all goes away once we become truly unbonded.
Various Eastern philosophies, and Western for that matter, may _on the
surface_ suggest the betterness of such a thing, but they don't
really. As
Steve said, the Buddha exists as well inside a sentence as anything
else.
And Pirsig helps us triumph over such a silly notion as that the
metaphysical illusion of culture and ego, ipso facto, mean they are
purposeless fictions that should go away--everything has value.
There are many conversations to be had about what is most valuable,
but
without a doubt, the Logos was the Ergon.
Matt
On 9/21/09 11:54 AM, "Steve Peterson" <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hi All,
I was thinking about Boromir of Lord of the Rings. He was the great
warrior from Gondor who betrayed the Fellowship and tried to steal
the ring from Frodo causing Frodo to flea and continue the quest
alone joined only by Sam.
Boromir's Journey was the failure of the Hero's Journey. Boromir
answered the call but was not fully committed himself to the quest.
The others were devoted to the quest regardless of the chances of
success. Boromir did not lack any belief that the others had. There
is no talk of belief in a higher authority where Boromir did not
believe or did not believe as strongly as the others in that higher
authority to set things right. When he argued that their task was
impossible, none of the others could disagree. I don't think he had
any different assessment of the probability of success for the
Fellowship's task as any other members of the Fellowship, yet he was
in great despair, and the others were not--at least not to the degree
that Boromir was. I think the others had faith and that Boromir's
lack of faith destroyed him and that his lack of faith was not a lack
of belief. The difference was not the presence of absence of an
intellectual structure but an attitude toward the world or trust in
the process of life.
Though he is a fictional character, the self-destruction of Boromir
rings true to me. There is something to faith that is not about
belief but about something else that needs to be better articulated.
It is something that is important to both believers and nonbelievers.
I think the opposite of the sort of faith that Boromir's story is an
allegory for is not disbelief but despair and that faith of this sort
is not assenting to factual claims but letting go and being
comfortable with not being in control of everything. It is possible
to believe that God exists and that the Bible is true and still
despair. So even religious beliefs do not exhaust faith. I think it
is also saying "yes" to life. It is possible to not believe in a
divine authority and still feel that the universe is unfolding
exactly as it should be often in spite of the facts. It is an
attitude tied up in beauty. It is the understanding that the world of
our desires--the world that does not include illness, death, and
conflict--is not as beautiful and perfect as the world as it actually
is.
I don't think it is a stretch to say that the story of Boromir is a
story about faith since Tolkien was a Christian and is viewed as a
Christian writer, so faith is the sort of issue that we may expect
him to address in his fiction.
What do you think? Is faith the same as factual belief as
fundamentalists seem to be saying it is? Or is faith something that
is independent of belief as in the case of Boromir? Can you help me
articulate what it is?
If belief is a habit of action, as the pragmatists say, is all action
best described as some belief? Is faith--the aspect of faith that
does not concern factual belief--something that could benefit from a
pragmatist's re-describing now that religion fails to speak to so
many of us?
What does any of this have to do with the MOQ? I don't know, maybe
you can tell me?
Could I be any more geeky than to philosophize about elves, dwarves,
and hobbits? Probably not. Can you think of any parallels to
Boromir's story in less nerdy culture?
Best,
Steve
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