Hi Mark --
Thought I heard some flies buzzing around during our exchange.
Yeah. I swatted at one but I think he's still fluttering.
I have no problem with timidity if recognized as such. What perhaps I hear from you is a need for control. A need to be the source of all. Underlying the need for control is basic fear. Why do you think we try to control, and predict? It is all based on fear. It is fighting the phantoms of the unknown. This is why science is so important, so that we can temporarily disperse that fearful feeling. Why do you think all the righteous posts are dictating the "truth". Without such distraction, fear creeps in. No, MoQ is not just another religion (I hear), it is so much more. The fear of religion shines through. Tho through the valley of death I walk, I will fear no evil. As Kirkegaard would say, one has to die unto death. The road to positivity indeed! Where is your road leading you? Me? I'm as free as a bird, and this bird you cannot change. (Don't forget the guitar solo).
I don't think it's so much as a need for "control" as it is a need to partake of the "real". We emerge from nothingness to exist for an instant of eternity, then return to that nothingness. For that instant we borrow the "being" of our experience to watch an otherness in progress that is the only reality we know. We desperately search for the meaning of our existence, hoping to find a clue in its "being". We delude ourselves into believing that whatever our true reality is, it lies in this other, in this objective projection of our values.
The mystics teach that we are One with the universe, that we can contemplatively dissolve the illusion of multiplicity and be absorbed into the All. "Practice," they say; meditate yourself into the Atman." The Western mindset is more objective. It tells us that we're biologically part of this other. Not only our bodies but our self-awareness, thoughts and feelings are functions of bio-psycho-physiological evolution. Modern philosophers, who acknowledge that the "knowing mind" is something different than "being", theorize that consciousness (or its intellectual, moral or esthetic derivatives) must be an aggregate -- a fundamental principle or 'meme' -- of the physical universe. But they have yet to explain the explain the dynamics of this theory.
The Essentialist has another otogeny. Selfness in itself is nothingness, non-existent. Its existence is absolutely dependent on the primary source which negates it. The negate cannot participate in the primary source because the Source is absolute and unconditional. Instead, it is drawn to the value of the source which it perceives experientially as the being of otherness. The negate (self) objectivizes Value to identify its proprietary organic being as well as the things and events of an external world. The only "real" component in this valuistic construct is the Value of Essence itself -- the absolute, immutable, unconditional source of all appearance. It is through Value that the negated self realizes (reclaims) its Essential Reality.
If you can overdcome your "humility" and put this ontogeny in Pirsig's terms, you'll have an audience of appreciative people. (You'll also prove you are a better philosopher than I am.)
Thanks, Mark, and good luck. --Ham 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/
