Marco,
Bravo! Excellent Quotation!
The idea that "...you feel unpeaceful even if it's right..." has to be one
of the most important discoveries of the narrator on his journey as he
struggles to become Phaedrus again. As the book progresses, it becomes
obvious that the best machine is the one that is neither comfortable nor
painful (a dichotomy) but rather a constant combination of both (holistic
realization or mindfulness).
Again, Bravo!
Thracian Bard
----- Original Message -----
From: Marco <marble@inwind.it>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 4:10 PM
Subject: Re: MD Inside and Outside
> Elephant, Platt, all
>
>
> > ELEPHANT:
> > I don't think that every road can be a "real" road to the
> > truth either. You say later that the only thing we can
> > know in a journey without maps is whether the road is
> > comfortable or not. That's true. But what we don't
> > know is whether a road that is comfortably high-quality
> > at this point is really going to be *ultimately* satisfactory.
> > It may still be a nice road, and lead off in the wrong
> > direction, hence: not all roads are real roads to the good and
> > the true.
>
>
> MARCO:
> In a MOQ context, this is a contradiction.
>
>
> RMP:
> "If the machine produces tranquillity it's right. If it disturbs you
> it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed. The test of
> the machine's always your own mind. There isn't any other test."
>
> DeWeese asks, "What if the machine is wrong and I feel peaceful about
> it?"
>
> "That's self-contradictory. If you really don't care you aren't going to
> know it's wrong. The thought'll never occur to you. The act of
> pronouncing it wrong's a form of caring.
>
> What's more common is that you feel unpeaceful even if it's right, and I
> think that's the actual case here. In this case, if you're worried, it
> isn't right.
>
> (ZAMM, chapter 14)
>
>
> MARCO:
> Probably the Pirsig's best lines. If you really take care for your
> journey, a wrong road can't be "nice".
>
>
> RMP:
> Secondary roads are preferred. Paved county roads are the best, state
> highways are next. Freeways are the worst. We want to make good time,
> but for us now this is measured with emphasis on ``good'' rather than
> ``time'' and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach
> changes. Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much
> more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don't get swung
> from side to side in any compartment. Roads with little traffic are more
> enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are
> better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come
> almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where
> people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to
> ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you
> want rather than short, where people ask where you're from and how long
> you've been riding.
> It was some years ago that my wife and I and our friends first began to
> catch on to these roads. We took them once in a while for variety or for
> a shortcut to another main highway, and each time the scenery was grand
> and we left the road with a feeling of relaxation and enjoyment. We did
> this time after time before realizing what should have been obvious:
> these roads are truly different from the main ones. The whole pace of
> life and personality of the people who live along them are different.
> They're not going anywhere. They're not too busy to be courteous. The
> HERENESS and NOWNESS of things is something they know all about. It's
> the others, the ones who moved to the cities years ago and their lost
> offspring, who have all but forgotten it. The discovery was a real find.
> I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we
> didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps,
> into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was
> just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. THE TRUTH KNOCKS ON THE
> DOOR AND YOU SAY "GO AWAY, I'M LOOKING FOR THE TRUTH" AND SO IT GOES
> AWAY. Puzzling.
>
> (ZAMM, chapter 1, Marco's emphasis)
>
>
> MARCO:
> Elephant, the truth is here and now under our feet, and you say, "GO
> AWAY, I'M LOOKING FOR THE TRUTH"
>
>
> > > MARCO:
> > > From these words I realize that:
> > >
> > > 1) The "General Theory of Relativity" has been invented
> > > about 100 years ago.
> > > Just like "Newton's Law of Gravity", it's an intellectual
> > > pattern created to explain a Natural Phenomenon.
>
>
> > ELEPHANT:
> > Stop right there. No. Neither Newton nor Einstein are 'explaining'
> > "Natural Phenomena".
> > This is evident (1) in that it is their theories which
> > define what natural phenomenon are in any case
> > (mass, force, acceleration etc),
> > and (2) in that no *explanation* of gravitation is
> > acheived by either Newton or Einstein: what is
> > acheived is *mathematisation* of gravitation (or
> > in Einsteins case of *gravitations* plural): quite a
> > different acheivement.
>
>
> MARCO:
> STOP YOU NOW ! :-)
>
> EXPLAIN: "To make plain, manifest or intelligible; to account for; to
> elucidate; TO DEFINE.
> EXPLANATION: "The meaning of or REASON GIVEN FOR ANYTHING" [Latin
> Explanare: to make smooth]
> (The Webster's Dictionary of the American Language, Marco's emphasis)
>
> IM very HO the "mathematisation" of gravitation (there is no such term
> in my dictionary..... ) is an "explanation", in the sense that it's a
> "reason given for " gravitation, expressed in mathematical terms. The
> purpose of science is to give a reason for anything.. and this is also
> the purpose of Einstein's and Newton's laws. Of course, the explanation
> is not the phenomenon. We all, as well as Newton and Einstein, know it
> very well.
>
>
> ELEPHANT:
> > I often have to repeat this:
> >
> > We're still waiting for our long promised scientific
> > *theory of everything* - it has *not* arrived, repeat
> > *not* arrived. Not yet, boys, not yet. Mark
> > this. We do *not* know why masses attract. They just do.
> >
> > (Similarly, we do not understand why over certain
> > intergalactic distances masses actually repel - they just
> > do).
>
> MARCO:
> Of course, Elephant. I agree. Probably it will never come. I don't see
> the problem.
>
>
> ELEPHANT
> > Sorry to cut this short Marco,
>
> MARCO:
> Not a problem Elephant. Really, not a problem
>
>
>
> ***************
>
>
> PLATT:
> "To experience this prime reality intensely without filters is beauty's
> role. In the presence of a great painting or a stunning jazz riff we
> witness the normally separate dichotomies of freedom/order,
> sameness/difference, simplicity/complexity, depth/surface,
> response/energy, grace/seriousness, truth/imagination, one/many, etc.
> together as single, overwhelming, egoless seizure of delight-value at
> its very peak".
>
> MARCO:
> nothing to add, for now. Thanks for your words. I want to start again a
> thread about beauty, but let me few days more.
>
>
>
> Grazie, Ciao.
> Marco
>
>
>
>
>
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