Hi Kevin,
Actually my zeal is not all that new, it's been around with me for a long
time. Hence some of my past posts, a little too much zeal and not enough
calm clarity.
I am most interested in all of those tasks you state. I believe that
understanding the formation of how we make those menus and how we come to
believe in the menus we do will lead to a comprehensive menu that would
"open confrontation of menus to explode the static reality that they
represent?" My ideas and this search would not necessarily be toward a
"Deeper Fundamental Reality that the MOQ points us to?" I believe we need
to use the MOQ and many other ideas and research. But I do not wish to go
toward the Fundamental Reality that Pirsig and others strive towards and
after. I am not certain I can, or if there will be any certain will come
out of this goal. I think some clarity can be made in understanding how and
why we believe what we do. This process can be made clear. A smaller goal
with direct applications towards tolerance of other views and a sense of
humility we all could use.
Tolerance and humility are goals I strive for but often come up short,
Gary
---- Original Message -----
From: Kevin <kevin@xap.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 10:53 AM
Subject: RE: MD Consciousness
> 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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