Doctor Ant said to David Harding:
David, I rather like the phrase “pretend” here though “Context 2 of the MOQ”
(to use Paul’s terminology) is a little more than just pretending! If I’m
having critical surgery, I don’t want the surgeons just to be pretending; I
want them to be – at the very least – assuming that their surgical procedures
will work in practice i.e. that the surgeon/s will have previous assumptions
(or postulations) that have been previously seen to work....The MOQ is just a
“working postulation” and I think this what the Two Contexts is designed to
help illustrate.
David Harding replied:
Ant - It is a good idea when talking with folks to change your words and even
your perspective to explain things to them. Despite her claims to the
contrary - Marsha fails to see the value of assuming things exist before we
experience them as we do in the second context. Marsha is well and truly stuck
in the first context. ...If you talk with Marsha from the second context [as
dmb does] then you're not going to get anywhere because she will continually
call it all an illusion or 'just ideas' or something like that. Dmb and Marsha
play a game of name calling from either perspective. The only way you can show
Marsha the second context is by speaking from her perspective - the first
context - and pointing to the alternative context which is often times opposed
to the value she sees in the first context. ....
dmb says:
For the second time today, I'll object to the notion that my position is
limited to just one of the two contexts. Maybe this misconception stems from
the fact that my complaints about Marsha are directed at her misuse of words
and concepts. This is just a matter of relevance, a matter of sticking to the
topic and not a denial of the MOQ's mysticism, not a knock on the value of
meditation or introspection. As a response or answer to the charges of
anti-intellectualism and empty relativism, that is simply not relevant. It is
an absurd non-sequitor. Basically, it's just not an answer at all. That's my
objection. She deploys this half-baked Buddhism instead of answering the actual
charges. I'd be happy to discuss the nature of enlightenment, especially as
Pirsig construes it. But, for example, that simply has nothing to do with
whether or not it makes any sense to describe static patterns as ever-changing.
Meditation has nothing to do with whether or not that makes any sense. Let me
use an analogy here.
The MOQ is just an analogy. As Ant puts it, the MOQ is just a working
postulation. As Pirsig puts it, of course it just an analogy. Everything is
just an analogy, but the dialecticians don't know that. In ZAMM we get that
simple yet radical description of reality as we know it; it's analogies all the
way down. Quality is the source and substance of these analogies, it is the
continuing stimulus which caused us to create this world of analogies. You
might say that in the MOQ, we know that our static reality is a just movie. The
mythos is this movie, this static reality in which we all live. If you think
this movie is the real reality and not a giant pile of man-made analogies, then
yes, it is an illusion. But the MOQ says that about SOM and explicitly rejects
SOM for that reason, among others.
So, let's say that Pirsig has said to us, SOM is not reality. That's just a
movie, a pile of analogies and, by the way, it's not a very good movie. It has
serious flaws, one of which is that it doesn't know it's just a movie. Let me
show you a better movie, one that freer for knowing that we are constructing it
and we can make another if we like too. The MOQ itself, that is the particular
arrangement of concepts and descriptions we find in Pirsig's writings, is that
movie. He knows it's just an analogy and so do we. Reality itself (DQ),
according to this movie, can never be included within the movie. The movie is
within and subordinate to the primary empirical reality (DQ).
In this analogy, then, I'm trying to talk about the structure of the movie. I
know it's a movie but it still has certain parts that go with other parts. I
know I'm not talking about the primary empirical reality or the mystic reality
or the Ultimate Truth of anything.
DMB:
I'm just saying that within the movie, Dorothy returns from OZ and she was
improved by her time there.
Marsha:
The movie is just an illusion, not the Ultimate Truth.
DMB:
Yea, I know. Pirsig tells us this and he wrote the movie. But in the movie,
Dorothy gets back home to Kansas and her family, right?
Marsha:
Kansas is only a conventional label and Dorothy is a fiction.
DMB:
Yes, of course. Again, I do realize that we're just talking about a movie that
Pirsig wrote. That's the purpose of this forum, right? So, in the movie, you're
agreeing Dorothy gets home or not? Or are you saying that her journey did not
help her grow as a person?
Marsha:
I don't give a bunny's butt about growth. Oz was an illusion and her family
member are just conventional fictions like myself. I'm not anybody.
DMB:
You didn't really watch the movie, did you? Did you fall asleep, or what?
Marsha:
You're just projecting your own need for absolute object truth onto me.
DMB:
Huh? Did you see that part where she wakes up in her bed at home, or not?
Marsha:
When I meditate, the memory of films I've seen just come and go. Movies are
ever-changing. Movies are just illusions and I don't need your fancy ideas
about the actual content of the movie we're all here to discuss.
DMB:
Did you have some popcorn, at least?
Marsha:
Popcorn is an illusion. So is butter. I am not anyone. I'm whatever you think I
am.
Ian:
Oh, look at you two peas in a pod. What's all the fuss about anyway?
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