The buddha nature is at home in small talk just as well as the gears of a motorcycle. Therefore, the most mind numbing conversation is alive with DQ. Dan and all MOQers:
I think your essay is a beautiful portrait of alienation. The outpouring of sympathetic response shows, ironically, that feelings of loneliness and isolation are something we all have in common. Maybe that goes past irony and makes it all the way to funny. But seriously, I think the picture you paint is one that we can all relate to because alienation is the disease of our time. That word is a bit vague and it has Marxist overtones, but at bottom its just a feeling of not being at home in this world. Its not just about being left out of the party or being insulted by the stupidity of TV, but that's part of it too. Alienation expresses itself a million different ways, not least of all by the desire to seek an alternative vision of the world. That's what drew many of us to Pirsig's work and to this forum, no? It seems to me that Pirsig thinks he's diagnosed the source of the problem and his MOQ is aimed at making us feel at home in the world instead, as Arlo has so eloquently and repeatedly explained. I think that one of the most destructive features of this sense of alienation is that we generally blame ourselves, as if there were something wrong with us personally. But its not a personal problem. Its a metaphysical problem that we all suffer from on a personal level. Big difference. I mean, if everybody feels like they're drinking life through a straw, then why do we each suppose that its only our own life that sucks so hard? Sure, some folks really are painfully shy or socially clumsy but I think even the most confident and un-neurotic person in the world feels that way at least sometimes. I mean, if you're anything like me, certain social situations make me uncomfortable because it feels like I'm just pretending to be a part of it. I feel that I must participate in certain events even though they seem to be completely ridiculous and embarrassing. The company Christmas party springs to mind. Or how about singing the national anthem at a baseball game? Never felt so alone as when I was singing a song with tens of thousands of people. At parties, when I meet somebody who is particularly suburban and full of plattitudes, I have a kind of out-of-body experience where my soul leaves for a while until the small talk is over. As a result, I've never had a conversation about the weather or my job except for the ones I watched from the ceiling. Anyway, nice work. It made me feel a little bit more at home in the world. It also made me put on a warm pair of socks. dmb 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
