Hi Dan -- Could you please explain the "Cleveland harbor effect"?
Also, in responding to Platt's question concerning whether the individual creates the ficticious self or vice-versa, you said: > I think the MOQ would say the individual invents the ficticous self > so in a sense we are our own creators. What is ficticious about the self? Do you mean that the self is non-existent (i.e., nothingness), or simply that is is an illusion? I have been arguing with Arthur Weatherall that "awareness without an object" is nothingness, and that the self has no empirical reality. Is this the sense in which you say it is "ficticious"? You go on to explain "suffering" as a Buddhist precept, implying that it is also the basis of MoQ morality: > Buddhism teaches that the solution to suffering is the process of > overcoming > the pervasive conditioning of seeing the self as separate from the world. > We > have to understand the true nature of people and things. When the > individual > self is seen as an empty concept, as a convenient shorthand, Buddhism > teaches that we enter a state beyond suffering. The true path is morality. > Thus the MOQ is built on morality. I don't really see the connection between suffering and morality, unless the Christian notion of "doing penitence" is considered a moral act. From what little reading I've done on Buddhistic philosophy (including Karen Armstrong's recent best-seller), the major goal is to eliminate suffering by overcoming Desire. Buddha's premise was that suffering results from desiring what one can't possess; so that by ridding ourselves of desire, we eliminate suffering. Although merging the self in Oneness is a stated phase of "enlightenment", I don't recall "seeing the self as separate from the world" specifically cited in relation to suffering. In my opinion, the practice of Buddhism has more in common with psychotherapy than with philosophy. The aim is to savor life in an epicurean sense, to live it modestly in a Christian sense, and to avoid unnecessary stress by pursuing only reasonable goals. I think Buddha would have shunned metaphysics and ontology on the ground that they exceed man's intellectual capacity, thus causing stress and suffering. He would likely have opposed science and technology for the same reason. The MoQ may have been built on morality, but morality is man's invention. And I disagree that the individual creates himself. The individual is a being-aware. The sensible self is negated from the uncreated source that finite beings perceive as otherness. Living life fully is not about avoiding suffering. It's realizing the value of what we experience and understanding it as the differentiated perspective of an absolute Essence. Perhaps in MoQ parlance this would be called "living at the intellectual level". In any case, it has little in common with Buddhism. But, as Platt has been known to say, I could be wrong. Essentially yours, Ham 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/
