John said to Andre:
I think John McC might have had a different point in mind than the one picked
out here. [..."gripe seems to be that the MOQ does not fulfill their innermost
longing."] I think his point might have been something along the lines of the
following essay, composed by Royce in homage to his friend and mentor, William
James:
dmb says:
I responded to nearly of John M's points and none of them reminded of James. If
he had been talking like James, there would have been no good reason to make so
many corrections. In fact, Royce's description of James only helps to explain
those corrections.
John McConnell had said to dmb:
But you haven't excluded religion??? C'mon!! The only religion you
haven't excluded is Buddhism. You have made it patently clear that you
and Pirsig are anti-theistic. The MOQ tolerates religion but does not
accept it as anything more than a flawed social pattern. You have
dismissed faith in God as "garbage, low quality". (Pirsig seems somewhat
more tolerant.)
dmb replied to John M:
...As a
matter of fact, it was Pirsig who used the those words ("intellectual
garbage" and "low quality" ) to describe "faith". And that's the KIND of
religion that Pirsig rules out. I'm talking about "excluding"
faith-based, social level religion precisely because it has no respect
for the Dynamic Quality or for intellectual quality. In that sense, the
MOQ is anti-theistic. But the MOQ is also a form of mysticism, is a
non-theistic religion, a form of American Buddhism, an advocate of the
perennial philosophy (which says the esoteric mystical core of the all
the great religions are in agreement). ...I tried to show the CONTRAST between
mystics (those with
actual experience of the "divine") and the traditional faith-based
religions, how Christianity misconstrued mysticism as some kind of
blasphemy, which has been in the business of prohibiting and interfering
with the possibility of having an actual experience for yourself. For
many centuries this prohibition was even enforced with the threat of
death. That's what's wrong with social-level, faith-based religion. It's
idolatry. It's the unreflective, unexamined worship of a set of dogmas,
rituals and traditions. That's why it is neither Dynamic nor even
intellectual.
dmb replies presently:
It's pretty easy to see this same idea in Josiah Royce's description of William
James's view. "The old-world types of reverence for the external forms of the
church find no place in his pages," Royce said. "In James eyes, the forms, the
external organizations of the religious world simply wither; it is the
individual that is more and more." These are the static forms that Pirsig
demotes in favor of direct experience. John M continued, explaining that
"one of the key issues with the MOQ" for him is that Pirsig "deliberately
excludes the most
significant dimension of my human experience!" and how the MOQ "comes up short
and says, 'Your experience doesn't count. It isn't valid, and there's no place
for it in the MOQ.'" "Where did you get that idea? Nothing could be further
from the truth," I said."
The MOQ absolutely does NOT say any such thing. Quite the opposite, in
fact."
I doubt very much that John M was defending the importance mystical experience.
I think the "inner experience" he treasures is all wrapped up in a particular
religion, faith of a certain form and Christian theism in particular. That is
the static stuff that we do NOT find in James 's work on religious experience.
This is all about the difference between static quality and Dynamic Quality,
which are the centrals terms on which James and Pirsig agree.
Finally, I think you (John) like the quote from Josiah Royce's "William James
and the Philosophy of Life" because you want to see yourself as the contrarian
genius who has been unjustly persecuted, as opposed to a regular person who
doesn't understand very much. I strongly suspect you quoted the passage from
Royce because you want to identify with "religious geniuses everywhere.
World-renowned saints of the historic church," and with the "obscure and
ignorant revivalist, with faith healers, with poets, with sages, with heretics,
with men that wander about in all sorts of sheepskins and goatskins, ...who, by
inner experience, have obtained the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen." And why wouldn't you? It's so much better to be counted
among "the religious geniuses (like the Zuni Brujo, no doubt), the unpopular
inquirers, the noble outcasts," and other heroes than it is to be counted among
the confused.
This kind of persecution complex is very useful when the purpose is
self-aggrandizement or when trying to generate immunity from criticism,
provided that people find it convincing. But you're motives are far too
transparent for that, John. You're not fooling anyone, except maybe yourself.
You should give it up - or get much, much better at it.
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