Nihilism is for Nincompoops! 'nother good one. they're just raining down in MD today. Thanks Ham.
Ham: > > As you must be aware by now, I have problems with much of the MOQ > terminology. John: Yes! Or mine. Or Royce or James or anybody I've met. You seem to be pretty stuck in your own terms. Hmmm... wonder if that's any sort of problem? Ham: > The author's metaphors and euphemisms don't help me understand > Pirsig's reality any more than my own. John: that's because, Ham, you have to step outside of your own reality in order to get perspective on it. You can't understand your own reality, unless you view it from somebody else's. And it seems to me that you're trying to do it the other way around, understand your own reality first, and then use that to analyze the other's. Won't work. Fundamentally problematic, is my opinion. Ham: > Essentially, they shroud everything known > about the world in a "cloud of unreality". Unreality is meaningless to me > as a > philosophy of life. > John: Right! to you, all other's reality is unreal. Like I said, you got a fundamental problem. Ham: > Here are two recent examples . . . > > Joe writes: > >> Hi Ham and All, >> >> Evolution can be described as levels in existence. How many levels? >> For myself I accept seven levels in existence. Reality has a number >> of faces. >> > > Yes, I suppose evolution can be described as a series of levels. But WHY? > This is like the poet's numerical analysis of his love for a lady: "Let me > count the ways". Does parsing Love numerically make a romantic attraction > more insightful or comprehensible? > John: Well said! and apropos as well. But or some people, numbers work better as thinking terms. That's their reality. for me? No. But sometimes you can catch glimpses of a transcendant harmony coming from different terms and "realities" Since there is that which is common to the other, we assume this as some sort of "super-reality" or truer picture, and I believe that is the best analogy for DQ as I can come up with right now. It's not that poetic, and it's not that numerical, but it's as honest as I can be. > Marsha wrote: > >> I accept that duality is the convention. >> > Ham responded: > But what does it gain us intellectually to > > simply call existence a "convention"? John replies: It frees us to realize we are making a choice. There is not any "truth" that is thrust upon us and forced down our throats, because in the end they are all conventions, and thus, all choices. Intellectually, that is very, very freeing because it opens up the boundaries to thought and inquiry infinitely. Ham ponders: And if existence is a convention, > then you are a convention within it, and maybe Reality itself is only a > convention. Isn't that stretching nihilism to absurdity? > John: Nihilism is absurd. Undoubtedly. But there is a big difference between nothing and infinity Ham. A pluralisim of conventions is the opposite of no convention. We conceptualize infinity through a pluralism of numbers, so too do we conceptualize an indefinable harmony that we strive for, without being able to pin any particular conventional viewpoint as THEE one. And yeah, the fact that this viewpoint I offer you isn't THEE viewpoint either could be viewed as a problem. But... I hope you understand why I think (from my viewpoint) that it isn't. Ham: > > Marsha, I may not have all the answers, but I know that existence is not > the > primary reality and there is more to it than reified idioms. I authored > the > Philosophy of Essence to put reality into a cosmological perspective. > But if existence is only convention, as you suggrest, there's no point in > philosophizing about it until we all wake up from this dreamlike stupor > and have something Real to talk about. > > Nihilism is for nincompoops. Let's get REAL, folks! > > Essentially speaking, > Ham Ham, I know I do not have all the answers, but I do know that we folks are as real as it gets. Not sure about you and yours. "What do you see when you turn out the lights? I can't tell you, but I know it's mine" John 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
