Krimel, I guess you don't even recognize that all the "progress" you cite is material in nature. No doubt great strides have been made in the physical realm by science and technology. But what I, John and Pirsig are talking about is our spiritual side -- the side that responds to morals, ideals and beauty, perhaps best said by the old adage, "Man does not live by bread alone." What we're talking about is described not only in Chapter 22 of Lila but also in the poem "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot.
Science has been so successful in improving our physical lives that many have come to rely on it for answers to everything. The media, for instance, always cites "scientific studies show" to establish truth. The educational establishment is dedicated to teaching "critical thinking" based science's methodology. The subject-object paradigm is widely accepted in the West as "the way it is." And therein lies the problem. You claim religion and philosophy have "failed to guide us in what kind of Gods we ought to become " Just the notion that becoming Gods should by a human goal reveals an authoritarian impulse. Scientists with their "objectivity" already think of themselves as Gods. "An objective observer does not have relative opinions because he is nowhere within the world he observes. Good old Dusenberry. This was the same hogwash he denounced in the 1950s in Montana." (Lila, 22) The "hogwash" referred to is simply that scientific models leave out the scientist that created the model. Besides, science says both religion and philosophy to be much ado about nothing. As Stephen Hawking just , "nothing" caused the universe. It arose "spontaneously." No Creator required. So much of religion. As for philosophy, some of us had hoped the MOQ would fill the vacuum, only to see it summarily ignored if not outright rejected by the bulk of S/O intellectual elites. In sum, science is suited to discover only what is material. But experience of our own conscious life with it thoughts, feelings, desires, and appreciation of beauty is excellent evidence of immaterial realities that cannot be fully understood by science. Materialism by itself cannot express the full scope of the real. That's the rub. Something else besides the comings and goings of material multiverses is going on. Pirsig's metaphysics explains what that "something else" may be. Platt . On 6 Sep 2010 at 1:09, Krimel wrote: John and Platt, I find it truly ironic to be accused of being a hard headed materialistic nihilist whatever by pessimists like the two of you. Of course there was blood and guts and veins in the teeth of the 20th century but at the same time we cured most of the diseases that had killed our ancestors, we opened up possibilities for communication and communion undreamt of in the past. We expanded human conscious beyond the wildest imaginings of the ancient mystics and gained a command over the elements that fulfills the longings of the alchemists. We expanded the Logos and the Mythos creating ever new possibilities for self expression and self discovery. If this has had negative side effects, and surely it has, then these are the direct effects of dynamic quality. It began in the 20s with newsreels and radio, silent and sequential and by the end of the century it was instant and randomly accessible. The very nature of humanity is changing before our eyes and we are becoming more than any Victorian could have imagined. You want to lay the "blame" for this on science? What blame? Science makes us ever closer to God's. We have all but ended hunger and are taking up the pen and composing messages in DNA, the stuff of life itself. It is religion and philosophy that have failed to guide us in what kind of Gods we ought to become. Reactionaries and fundamentalists are the fall-out of that failure. The result is a moral vacuum we fill with money, the true measure of all Value. What money can't buy, it can rent. That is a what has made a husk of the modern soul. Blaming it on science and the classical understanding is just too obvious and too obviously wrong. Krimel 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/md/archives.html 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/md/archives.html
