Hi Sam,
Bad drama? Well I've been working on this long email
to explain it but then I had this intuition: There's
this guy Nehamas from U. Of Chicago who just won the
McArthur I think, and anyway boom his book "Life as
Literature" summarizes my "bad drama" in Nietzsche
idea. I'm 15 years too late. Pshaw. It was written in
1985 so I'm getting closer to something original in
terms of my own ideas. That's sort of my personal
goal, my personal good drama. Anyway, to me, ALL of
Nietzsche is [DQ] wink [/DQ}. "Life as literature" is
another way of saying it. The book, "drama of the
gifted child" by Alice Miller touches on it too.
What is the idea? You "swerve" truth to fit your drama
(that term is from Jonathon Lear, another uof c guy).
You extract "essences" to FIT your drama. The MIND
forms dramas in order to "extract" a sense of LOVE
from the environment. Why? Because as MAMMALS we need
love( a general theory of love, lewis,amini,etc.
explains the science of this). And since the number of
environments that we grow up in is INFINITE, the MIND
uses ESSENCES as building blocks to create a sense of
love. It's LOVELINE stuff: the abused child "creates"
a drama where the parent becomes a hero whereas the
normal child creates a drama to demonize his parents.
Why? You need to control your environment to create
meaning, and meaning is love. It becomes a "behavior"
though as Wittgenstein would say in a Pirsigian way
"I'm not a behaviorist because of DQ." Nietzsche shows
how we are "EMBODIED" and through that we "conjure" up
a drama from the elements of our "unconscious". To be
embodied is to be mammalian and the mind fights
against it OUT of its NEED for survival. Thus, we
arrive at ANGST: an inability to reconcile the
inherent contradiction of life.
You could say it is EXISTENTIAL: we create [dq] "S
scents" [/dq] out of the objects we interact with in
order to "feed" our drama. Think of people as hungry
hobgoblins who can magically transform any item into
magic little pills that give us a burst of energy. We
can OVERCOME this angst by becoming ubermensch,
fighting daily to funnel this 'eternal return' into a
becoming that is. It's basically learning
"paraconsistent" logic: a logic of mind that allows
for contradiction, a language that can have [dq] this
[/dq].
So what is your drama? That's my view on LILA: Pirsig
talks about getting laid. That is his drama. Life as
literature. What is the "paraconsistent" logic on
LILA? She is good biology, bad socially, and great
dynamically. Pirsig has a paraconsistent logic in his
LILA. Salinger also did it too with his short story
"teddy." That's why he stopped his "celebrity": he had
to become who he was and a "celebrity" was not it.
It's "either/or" as Kierkegaard might say. That's if
you are to stop living in "bad faith" as sartre might
say. You must "show" yourself. That's good drama, but
most of us live bad drama. "Lives of quiet
desperation" (please help on that quote).
But [dq] the song remains the same [\dq]. How to know
what to do? What is bad drama and what is good drama?
Aye, there's the rub. Well, you have to be Hamlet.
Start acting and stop thinking. "Look, don't think."
And if it is all the "good" you will know. How to know
what to do? Take care of the "good" in you and you'll
know. But you have to overcome it everyday. The bad
drama is always there. And you need an "injunctive"
practice: to become who you are. That is the
injunctive practice, not yoga. Not Wilber. [DQ] you
are your injunctive practice.[\dq]
Hope [dq] this [/dq] helps.
Angus
--- Elizaphanian <Elizaphanian@btinternet.com> wrote:
> Angus - I found this post of yours very intriguing.
> Could you say a bit more
> about Nietzche and bad drama, and perhaps point me
> to where he discusses it?
>
> Thanks
> Sam
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Angus Guschwan" <arshilegorky@yahoo.com>
> To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
> Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2001 10:01 PM
> Subject: MD How to know what to do?
>
>
> > Hi Wim,
> >
> > 'How can we know what we should do?'
> > 'Seek meaning'
> > There's a subtle distinction I need to make in
> > equating 'seek meaning' with Dynamic Quality.
> What's
> > the problem? It's my opinion that when we think,
> we
> > use "pictures." A picture can be a freeze frame of
> > events or just a memory. To think is to use logic,
> and
> > logic needs static objects to operate on. So, to
> 'seek
> > meaning' through 'thinking' means we have to use
> > static objects. And there's a problem with that.
> What
> > is it? The pictures we create, the memories,
> ALWAYS
> > contain defects of some sort. So, when we DECIDE
> what
> > to do, we make the MISTAKE of basing it on
> PICTURES
> > and pictures are inaccurate. To 'seek meaning' in
> this
> > context is ERRANT. In ADDITION, PICTURES are
> pliable,
> > and a person can change the 'meaning' of the
> pictures
> > to conform to his own 'drama', his own meaning.
> >
> > I've made so many errors in my life based on
> feeding
> > the drama that I adopted to give my life meaning.
> So
> > I've worked hard to distinguish between when I am
> > feeding my lie and when I am being authentic. So
> how
> > do I know what to do now? Well, if PICTURES are
> > involved, then I usually don't trust it. I have
> > learned to "hear" the dynamic voice in my body and
> I
> > have to learn to trust that. I sometimes fail and
> I
> > follow my old picture oriented drama. But WHEN I
> do
> > follow my dynamic voice, the results are
> phenomenal.
> >
> > So I don't think you have to wait to find out if
> you
> > acted right. Here is an example: I had 2 events to
> go
> > to one night: one event was old friends who feed
> my
> > old lie and the other event was Jane Siberry
> concert.
> > I fought with the decision 'what to do?' I finally
> > listened to my dynamic voice and went to the Jane
> > Siberry concert. I was late, so the lady GAVE me a
> $25
> > ticket for free. That was proof right there that
> it
> > was the thing to do.
> >
> > So I think you have to be careful with SEEK
> MEANING.
> > There is that BAD DRAMA that we all have
> (Nietzsche
> > went into depth about this). Seeking meaning in
> that
> > drama is bad (or lower quality). But seeking
> meaning
> > in a dynamic drama of your life is good (or
> better).
> > How to know the voice? It's a struggle everyday to
> > tune into it. So that's my reappraised answer.
> Good
> > question. Makes me think. And fight.
> >
> > Angus
> >
> > > I summarized my metaphysics 27/11 14:09 as:
> > > "we experience (epistemology) quality (ontology)
> and
> > > seek Meaning
> > > (meta-ethics)."
> > > I summarized Pirsig's MoQ as: "we experience
> quality
> > > and only
> > > history will show whether we chose to be a
> savior or
> > > a
> > > degenerate. In other words: Pirsig's answer to
> 'How
> > > can we know
> > > what we should do?' is 'You can't'."
> >
> >
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