Gary,
I'm curious about your "windmills" before I can discuss the
method/madness of charging them. I understand your passion regarding
menus and the danger they can represent in fragmenting society and
creating ideological enemies.
To clarify your newfound zeal, are you interesting in fathoming the
formation of menus? Or rather, in formulating a comprehensive menu that
would include all others for the sake of unity? Or are you interesting
in finding the best method for leading resturant patrons to see beyond
the menus to the Deeper Fundamental Reality that the MOQ points us to?
Or yet still, the open confrontation of menus to explode the static
reality that they represent?
I'm just curious where you're going with this. I spent a lot of time on
each of those roads so perhaps I can lend my experience once I know
where you're at.
Curious and respectful,
-Kevin
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
[mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk] On Behalf Of Gary Jaron
Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2002 11:24 AM
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: MD Consciousness
Hi Platt, Scott, Bo, John and all,
In 1799 at "Rosetta" [Rashid] Egypt a stone stella was found that
contained three passages carved on that stone. The passages were in
Egyptian Hieroglyphics, a later style of Egyptian writing called Demotic
and Greek. It was only in 1821 that J. F. Champollion was able to unlock
the relationships between the three languages and thus able to translate
Egyptian Hieroglyphics, which were prior to his work indecipherable to
the modern western culture. I feel like Champollion. Platt's post of
Friday August 23 on this thread is my Rosetta stone. Using it I hope to
articulate in a way that can be understood by you all, hence to explain
and make clear what I have been babbling on about.
Platt pointed out Pirsig's restaurant metaphor: "Metaphysics is not
reality. Metaphysics is names about reality. Metaphysics is a
restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu and no food."
[Lila, chapter 5, pg.63 in the Bantam 1991 trade paper back edition].
I have been fascinated with the menu and not the food. Why bother with
the menu, you may well ask. The importance of the menu lies in the fact
that there are so many different menus! Italian, Chinese, Mexican,
Russian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Scientific Materialism, Roman
Catholic Christianity, Mormonism, etc. Each human culture has written
its own menu. Human's have written hundred's of theological and
philosophic menus. People have been killed because they did not believe
in the majority culture's menu! Hitler's Holocaust, Russia's pogrom's,
Roman Catholics Inquisition and it's Crusades, Islamic Jihads, Stalin's
purges, McCarthy's spawned Red Scare, etc, all of these are examples of
some group imposing its menu on the fate of disbelievers. Menu's are
very important. People's life and liberties are at stake.
So, why are there so many menus? This is another way to phrase the
question that is behind my writings. I believe that if we could uncover
how and why we come to believe in the menus that we do, this knowledge
can used as a tool and a weapon. A way to free us from the destructive
use of those menus. It can be used as a means to destroy the certainty
that gives rise to the fanatical use of those menus. I hope that I can
eliminate the belief in the certainty of an individual menu. Out of
this newly forced uncertainty upon the True Believer their will result
in humility and tolerance.
A fool's errand? A misguided perception? Perhaps. A biographical
aside: When I came upon the play "The Man of Lamancha" by Dale
Wasserman, Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh, it was a relgious moment. Don
Quixote became one of my patron saints hence forth. In that play are
these lines spoken by
Cervantes: "I have been a soldier and seen my comrades fall in
battle...or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I have held them
in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is,
yet they died despairing. No glory, no gallant last words, only their
eyes filled with confussion, whimpering the question: "Why?" I do not
think they asked why they were dying, but why they had lived. When life
itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too
practical is madness. To surrender dreams--this may be madness. To
seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be
madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should
be!" I have taken up Quixote's sword and have become a dreamer, a
fellow knight errant of LaMancha.
That is my quest. To be able to find and make a meta-metaphysics that
will explain how a person comes to acquire knowledge, belief and value.
To make such a system that is understandable to any and all cultures is
an enormous task. To big for any one person. So, to start on that task
I want to make a system that can handle the Western world views. I do
not know enough to tackle non-Western cultures and beliefs. Though in
principle the system should be able to be applied to non-Western
cultures.
Those my positing so long ago in one of my essay's that the Universe was
fundamentally ''matter/energy". It seemed an important starting point
for a Western perspective. I was trying to describe a meta-menu and not
to describe the food. Trying to build a means to explain in Western
world view terms how menu's were made and how and why we come to believe
in their certainty.
Okay, I have not directly responded to anyone's prior posts. But I
think that this post will have made my position more understandable and
hence brought some clarity.
All these long series of posts and the challenges raised against what I
have been writing about have helped me to see clearly what I have been
doing and what I need to do. I think in the end I will be still be
re-shuffling Pirsig's MOQ map. Not because I disagree with how it
describes the food but because it feel [based upon my sense of Quality]
that it doesn't describe the process of how those menus came into being!
I am not sure at this moment what will be the outcome.
Bo raised a point in some prior post complaining about how so many of
us, after reading some author come back and try to re-work Pirsig based
on that author's ideas. I believe it has something to do with the fact
that we are map makers and map users. We perhaps have a Will to
Meaning, similar to Nietzsche's concept of a Will to Power. Meaning is
another synonym for Quality. Which is how and why I came to Pirsig.
Our Will towards Quality drives us on to figure things out. To make
sense of things in accordance with our menus/our beliefs. The pull and
push of the Dynamic and the Static within us motivates us to Dynamically
seek out the new and Statically take that in an use it. So long as we
are open to the Dynamic we will keep on seeking out new life and new
civilizations, to keep boldly going where we have not been before.
Amongst my many "personality disorders", I am a Star Trek fan, Gary
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