I've been hesitant to contribute because I come from a different perspective
than what I've read here so far but John B has brought out an area that
greatly interests me and sharing them might contribute to this discussion. My
earlier email told of my view of Pirsig's analogy of the bull's horns
representing his 2 processes of thinking and the problem with answering the
quality question. My perspective comes from a metaphysical experience some
years ago regarding this. At the time I had dropped out of society and was
driving truck long haul. What supports my belief that my perspective has
merit is that upon reentering society and reviewing current ideas I found
many conclusions and observations to parallel my own. MY greatest concern
writing this is you have a vocabulary specific to this forum and I'm
concerned that this may adversely impact my ability to successfully
communicate these observations so I ask that you approach this with a certain
compassionate misunderstanding and ask questions before discounting me.
I recognized immediately upon reading Pirsig my first step to understanding
him was to recognize these processes of thinking within myself. Although I
had been working on this for some time, it wasn't till this event I was able
to identify these in myself. Rather than using Scientific thinking and
Romantic thinking as Pirsig, I found the terms, Logic thinking and Primitive
thinking, (primitive in the sense that we evolved as a species with this
process of thinking), better descriptors of my duality. Through this event I
not only became cognizant of the process of my Consciousness but the
Collective Consciousness as well. To do this I first needed to become
familiar with an instinct in me that both motivates and governs this process
of Consciousness. Up to this point I had never been cognizant of my
relationship to the Collective Consciousness and it's influence on my
thinking, behavior and even why I had such problems in my relationship with
society.
The knowledge that every one of us is violated in their relationship with
society is what has motivated me to reenter society. I used to believe I was
one of the few who were victims of this violence. By learning to recognize
the beliefs, values and perception of reality of both parts to my duality I
clearly see the struggle inherent in their relationship within my
consciousness and, surprisingly, learned that this parallels the struggle
within our Collective Consciousness. A failure to recognize this process of
our thinking is a big part of societies inability to successfully confront
many of their problems. Society sees identifiable issues that are in reality
only the symptoms of the problem and then pursues them rather than
understanding the conflict generated within the process of our consciousness
and the same process within the Collective Consciousness.
We evolved as a species with what I call Primitive thinking, (intuition,
instinct and emotion). As people began to live in larger groups, issues of
organization appeared that Primitive thinking did not have the tools to solve
and it's form of violence inhibited a successful society. Over a period of
time a process of thinking better able to cope with these issues began to
evolve, Logic thinking. Logic thinking has a mandate to develop society and
to counter the adverse impact of Primitive thinking. To do this, logic
thinking evolved with it's own form of violence, the violence of language.
Right from the very beginning these two processes were at odds. A natural
conflict. This conflict exists within us as well as in the collective
consciousness. Pirsig stated that the answer to quality must lie somewhere
between the horns. I suggest that he is on the money with that one. A new
process of thinking is right now evolving within our species. I call it
Empathic Rationality. I'm trying desperately to shorten this email but the
subject is so vast it is difficult. I believe I'll stop for now, but if I get
questions or if an interest is expressed I would be happy to respond.
Darrell
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 25 2002 - 16:06:31 BST