DMB concluded in his last post:
"The art of thinking has always been about examining ourselves, our
beliefs and assumptions. It's predicated on a willingness to question
the values of one's own culture, to question the gods. But some merely
use the quips and quotes that seem to validate them. I don't what that's
called, but it ain't the love of wisdom and I can only see the most
common and crude value in that; ego"
Ant McWatt comments:
I fully agree with Dave here. I would just add that some of these latter ego
driven people primarily just like the attention. For instance, though Marsha
and John Carl are both members of LS (confusingly and unoriginally called
LilaSquad; the old name for this discussion group), see how many posts they
have uploaded there in the last six months since Marsha's ban on this
Discussion group at the New Year. The sound of silence over at LS recently (and
this is way before Platt's recent death too) is deafening.
Having said that, I don't think John Carl or Marsha are evil people. Far from
it; they are both relatively intelligent, kind people but there's something
lacking in their mental capacity somewhere. Unfortunately, due to the heritage
of Pirsig's own life as supposedly someone insane (which he wasn't btw -
certainly not from an MOQ perspective), his work does attract a fair share of
nuts, stalkers and other people of dubious character. And, of course,
unfortunately some of these people end up here (as well as Pirsig's front lawn
etc.). I think Horse is very tolerant of these people (which is a credit to
him) but, unfortunately, they often get in the way of the intellectual
discussions here which is what this Discussion group is meant to be all about.
Once these "nuts" show their hand on this Discussion group so to speak (as John
Carl has recently), I just now have the policy of ignoring them or, if they are
persistent in their behaviour, contacting the appropriate authorities to deal
with them. But, remember this, while there is disharmony, ignorance and
injustice on this world of ours (which, in the end, is causing this mental
illness), they will - sadly - be always be with us - in some form or another.
Best wishes,
Ant
----------------------------------------
Dave Buchanan posted July 6th 2014:
Andre said to dmb:
... John's confusion (or rather ineptitude) with some of the core, fundamental
MOQ insights is startling. ...I suggested he is following Bodvar and Marsha,
which he denies of course. But to John intellect IS SOM (a la Bodvar) because
he 'sees' and 'hears' it all around him. Similarly he retorts that his position
is correct because his 'experience' tells him so (a la Marsha). Yet despite the
corrections with presented evidence he remains ignorant or at least hopelessly
confused. He's not arguing against Pirsig, he's arguing within his self created
problem space. He's arguing with himself. It's a soliloquize really (a la
Marsha).
dmb says:
Yes, they all seem to share in a common misconception wherein intellect is
equated with SOM, with value-free classical squareness, and is otherwise
treated as the enemy and the problem. I suppose it's not just a coincidence
that such a view is held by unreasonable people, by those who are not persuaded
by evidence or reason.
Pirsig's first book presents the problem in detail. ZAMM focuses on the
cultural costs of SOM in the contemporary West and it traces the origins of
this problem all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. He shows us what
corruption means in the "church of reason". It's no accident that the
anti-intellectual mind is going love this critique and, apparently, take that
criticism as Pirsig's central message. They love to hate the problem too much.
They love to hate the problem so much that they fail to see the solution. Bo
even goes so far as to consider LILA a betrayal of the original truest truth.
Intellect was never equated to SOM in the first book either, but that fact
doesn't bother the anti-intellectualists either.
It seems to me that the anti-intellectualist view is almost never arrived at by
reflection or learning. It's an attitude, not a logical conclusion or a view
compelled by the relevant evidence. And some people with that attitude find
themselves reading Pirsig's classic and they love, love, love it - but for all
the wrong reasons. They don't want rationality to be seen as an art form or as
the highest expression of the godhead in the works of man. They love to hate
intellectual values and so they ignore all of Pirsig's talk about the solution
and/or find some lame excuse to disregard it.
I think this attitude is very common and has almost nothing to do with Pirsig's
thought. People bring this attitude with them when they read ZAMM and the
message they take from the book is just exactly what they already believed
anyway. You know, like one of those ink-blot tests.
But of course the art of thinking has always been about examining ourselves,
our beliefs and assumptions. It's predicated on a willingness to question the
values of one's own culture, to question the gods. But some merely use the
quips and quotes that seem to validate them. I don't what that's called, but it
ain't the love of wisdom and I can only see the most common and crude value in
that; ego.
.
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