Platt and all,
Your question regarding the Leuchter case has opened up an issue which increasingly
moves to the centre of my concerns, Platt. You are a great 'provocateur', if there is such a
thing.
What is at issue is how we can judge another person's account of their experience is
dishonest, hence that person is a 'bad guy'. [I won't buy into your question about how the
MOQ assists us to make this assessment - increasingly I doubt that it can, and Pirsig himself
half concedes that point in Ch 17 of Lila, "This is really the central problem in the static-
Dynamic conflict of evolution: how do you tell the saviors from the degenerates? Particularly
when they look alike, talk alike, and break all the rules alike?" He doesn't give a satisfactory
answer, either.]
Fritz Perls, who founded Gestalt Therapy, at the end of a long life, ruminated that 90% of
what we encounter in our lives is projection; that is, most of our experience is our own
creation. In that respect Leuchter is just a bit more engrossed in his own stage production
than the rest of us. As a casual 'therapist' I find Perl's insight is borne out time and time again
by rather normal people - especially as we approach the emotionally charged issues that
form the core of their personalities (I'll avoid the term neurosis for the moment.)
I'm currently interested in neuroprocessing, both experientially and philosophically. Adam
Crane, president of American BioTec and CapScan corporations has some interesting views
that go even further than Perls. In his view, interested as he is in how the mind works, "All of
the body is within the mind including the brain, but not all of the mind is within the body"
(supposedly the words of an anonymous yogi). Using Einstein's dictum that the field is the
sole governing agency of the particles, he places the mind squarely in the centre of things.
Indeed, he goes so far as to assert, along with the Psychology of Mind practitioners, that
"Thought is the source of human experience." That is a grand statement!
But he discriminates between two modes of thought, one of which is an image-making
process based on memory, the other linked to a "healthy, common sense, wiser intelligence."
The link with Krishnamurti, via David Bohm, who was a friend of Crane's, is strong. So the
issue becomes, how does anyone judge 'reality'? Are we all so locked into our own little self
created worlds that we can only talk past each other when it comes to what is, even if that
includes quality? Pirsig in ZMM suggests that everyone recognizes quality when they see it,
and then destroys his own argument with his test with his writing class - two students chose
the supposedly low quality text as the best. How do we show them they are wrong? As
someone has already said re this issue, it is not a case for majority votes, or the Bruni would
have been in the wrong. This is a fundamental issue.
One of the things which has quite frankly discouraged me as a member of this forum has
been watching each new participant reveal their mental 'blinkers'. When issues arise, as for
example the debate over Truman's use of the bomb, we see arguments trotted out that would
be laughable if it were not that their proponents seem to believe them; need to believe them
to protect their world views. Sometimes the views expressed are, to me, simply appalling.
And of course I am just protecting my equally biassed view - that's if there is NO way of
discriminating what is real. If our opinions are all of equal value, and are equally relative,
then our debate becomes an amusement, with no significance at all.
I do not believe this is the case. However, I will readily concede that much of what I or
anybody else holds to be self evident may well prove to be projection. For the person who is
seeking wisdom, how do I discriminate between what is my own construction, protecting my
own ego, and what might have some veracity for others with different experiences? Is there
any commonality, or are we islands of consciousness in a vast unknown ocean?
Krishnamurti and Bohm, in a conversation I have quoted before have explored how
intelligence differs from thought. Intelligence is the ability to read between the lines, to
encounter what is, free of the 'mind forged manacles' of memory and experience. We can
only learn language, for example, because at some level we can link new words with
something intelligible in the field not previously discriminated. This is an important, for
humans a hugely important, ability. It is a way of accessing quality that is different to the
quality experienced in art, for example. Pirsig's quality needs to get complex to deal with
these issues. Bohm attempted to set up Dialogue or Participatory Thought groups, to bring
about a much more efficient, holistic and productive standard of scientific and professional
communication. He was a believer in the implicit becoming explicit, the enfolded unfolding. In
this view intelligence is sensitivity, the brain becoming sensitive to influences which it as
insensitive to before. The quality of attention is critical to this (and this includes attending to
thought). Thinking is actually reduced as attention is developed, and insight flows from
increased attention.
It may be that the future belongs to those who can risk the most open and vulnerable
communication, sharing their sensitivity to what attention has provided them. Poor Leuchter
was too busy proving his own twisted myth correct to even hope to attend to anything which
might contradict his previously formed opinions.
But this is a moral tale. Was Leuchter evil? I say yes. Evil might usefully be defined as the
holding to static patterns of belief (prejudice, neurosis) in the face of the potential for
dynamic experience. So are we all evil? Of course. Then if evil is so commonplace it can't be
so bad? There are no words to say how bad it is, how destructive it is, how pervasive it is.
Can this ever change? I hope so.
John B
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