Hi John B.
On 30 May 99, at 5:37, John and Ruth Beasley wrote:
> Your comments about the 'tiny percentage' of dynamic quality 'gems'
> amongst the 'mindless crap' in the discuss forum are helpful, Manning. I
> appreciate your response and might do some lurking myself, though I tend
> to rush in when something excites me... As I said, I've only been involved
> a couple of weeks. My perspective on this is that it takes time to wade
> through the crap, and I start to weigh up the value to me of hanging
> around a high quality area filled with low quality material, when I could
> be reading a good book. The sheer volume of messages over that few days
> made this a real issue for me.
Having looked through both Manning and Struans responses to your
original post I can't find any reference to your " tiny percentage' of
dynamic quality 'gems' ", so I can only assume that this is a product
of your imagination or a distortion of the original responses.
You seem to have missed the point of moq_discuss, which is to
discuss ALL aspects of Pirsigs work and not just those aspects
which interest one or two contributors like yourself. It may be that
what you consider a 'gem' others consider complete trash and vice
versa.
The main thing though is to get and keep people talking so that
those gems can emerge - whatever your perspective. And yes,
people do sometimes lose the thread or lose their temper - so what!
If you've sampled much of Usenet recently you'll probably find that,
for the most part, the quality of discussion on this list is very, very
high in comparison, mainly on track and that the frequency and level
of abuse is nothing to be overly concerned about.
But having said that, if you feel that there is something you want to
contribute that will raise the standard even higher then please feel
free to do so - I promise I won't complain.
Incidentally, I read every message that appears on the list and if I
think someone is being unreasonable I either mail them privately or
publicly and ask them to stop. 99% of the time a private message
works. But generally I don't see the need.
> I'm not surprised you bit, Struan, as your attempts to locate Pirsig
> within the currently fashionable 'isms' leave me underwhelmed. This
> meta-philosophising is fine when it has some point, but I failed to grasp
> the point of yours. It was nice to see your rude PS, though. Perhaps I
> have an over developed 'inbuilt crap detector'. I find it almost
> intolerable to sit through meetings, now, for similar reasons.
The point with the above is not "to locate Pirsig within the currently
fashionable 'isms' " but to see where and at which points the MOQ
will add to and support currently unsupported or difficult areas within
the field of ethics which both myself and Struan are involved with in
one way or another. As 'Lila' is fully titled 'Lila - An Inquiry Into
Morals' and morality is tightly bound to ethics it would seem that
most other contributors to this list are similarly involved - whether
they know it or not.
Knowledge of the content of various '-isms', '-ists' and '-ologies' is
generally essential to this end as otherwise important points are
missed and for the cost of a decent dictionary of philosophy (or -
even cheaper - a quick search on the 'net) most terms can be easily
and quickly understood.
I would have though that you would understand - assuming you've
read both Zen and Lila - that some means of entering the mainstream
of philosophical thought would be a good thing for the MOQ. Ethics
is a good place to start - probably the best place considering the
current debate in Environmental Ethics. Unless this happens the
MOQ is ultimately destined to be seen as just another variant of the
mass of new age garbage that gets mistaken for intelligent discourse
and it's proponents as the sad gits that follow an equally sad
ideology and I don't want to see that happen. Personally, I believe the
MOQ is extremely valuable and worth more than this. Consequently
I, and a handful of others, spend much of our time thinking of ways to
promote and spread the value of the MOQ AND doing something
about it - not complaining about what's already there. Perhaps you
could do likewise - if it matters to you.
So ignore the 'crap', give us some 'gems' and as Struan DID say in
his original reply "climb up the mountain and have some fun".
Philosophy doesn't _have_ to be all straight faces and tweed coats.
> Oh well, I suppose all the world is out of step but me.
Hmmm!!! :)
Horse
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