[Ron] But fellas I think we are in more agreeance than we realize, I hope this is seen.
[Arlo] Oh, I see it. And its why this devolution into "epic war" dichotomies grates me so. But what's worse, and I feel compelled to say, is that this isn't simply disagreement over analogues (as Marsha points out). Oh, don't misunderstand, Marsha is quite right. But on top of this is a deliberate attempt to distort and deceive, what Ian referred to politely as dishonesty, and what I consider quite evil. In short, the "epic war" crowd sees two, and only two, possible choices. "Righteous Individualism" or "Evil collectivism". Besides misusing the words, any attempt to offer ANYTHING other than one or the other is met with immediate derision, talk-radio bombast and distortive rhetoric. I warned early on that EVERY time this comes up it inevitably leads to "Arlo denies the self", followed by masturbatory calls to "the founding fathers" in an attempt to associate the "collective consciousness" with Pol Pot, child molesters and people who get glee from squishing caterpillars. When someone like Granger comes along and offers a new way, a way rooted in Pirsig's MOQ, of considering the self, a way that does glory to both the "individual" and the "mythos", this too is met with the same-old, same-old "epic war" crap. And you see the knee-jerk reaction, 'twas not within three posts that Micah alluded to me denying a "self". And notice now, that Micah and I would be in agreement over whether or not animals have "selves", there is but odd silence. It is precisely the unique socio-cultural condition of the embodied life that gives us the "self" he accuses me of denying. But like all things dialogic, I realize the part I play in this. I should learn to simply ignore this despicable rhetoric, but like an itch on one's nose I am weaker to ignore it than I care to admit. Perhaps I should join a support group. Oh well. By the way, I like the term "noosphere". But it does, and maybe this is me, imply once again something "apart from us" which an external, removed agent interacts with or manipulates. IMHO, any MOQ-based view of the "self" must overcome this S/O dualism. Using S/O as a pragmatic reference point, as Pirsig suggests, is fine, but to get at real understanding we have to come up with better analogies, better metaphors, better understandings. A emergent-evolutionary "self" that arises from a mutually-transformative, mutually-generative dance between the patterns on the various MOQ levels of which we consist (which I highlight as "bodily-kinesthetic/socio-cultural") is a step in this direction. 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/
