[Ron] I'm drawn to the idea of the responsibility falling on my shoulders in my 3lb version of the universe. I don't dis the intelligent design side, but it seems like we are projecting ourselves on the universe..
[Arlo] Yes, I'm sure we are. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, as long as we remain aware that we are doing so. These "myths" we create are very powerful tools, and in many ways point to an understanding of ourselves and the cosmos that is not possible in "literal" language. I liken them to "art", paintings that reveal insights typically hidden to us. But no one says "that painting is right, and that painting is wrong" as they do with myth-stories. What people say is "that painting reveals so and so about the human condition, and this painting reveals such and such" (ignore the use of deterministic language, its just rhetorical to make a point). People want meaning as to why they exist, and many people appear convinced that that meaning must come from some external, or separate, entity or force. I believe that this has been the fault of organized religion, of power structures that garner power by externalizing this meaning and then demanding some subjugation to this authority. Myth should be a doorway to inner-understanding, in the Gnostic tradition for example, where we see that the myths we deploy are simply "art" that reveals the unspeakable, and not facts that demand obedience and loyalty. This projecting ourselves, I think, is a key problem in defining "Quality". We humanize it, make it some external consciousness that planned this whole thing out, and then enacted a very specific plan with us as a very particular goal. "Quality" simply becomes a thinly-veiled replacement term for literal translations of "God", rather than "God" being a mythological attempt over human history to understand "Quality". [Ron] I'm with you 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/
