Hello Carmen and squad,
Thank you for your nice letter. It is nice to know that I am not "crying
in the wilderness"
The experience I had in my childhood (B 1925) was very similar to yours.
I was raised in the US south where "religion" was force fed everybody and
was a far cry from "the good". Luckily my parents were not fanatic about it
but did pay lip service so that I did not have a big load of guilt and
shame to get rid of. It seems as far back as I can remember I recognized
the fact that the religion of the South was a bunch of bull and was used
mainly as a source of control and, historically, to justify things like
slavery and other sorts of warped beliefs. Although I have had very little
contact with organized religion it seems that it is slowly getting better
but still a long way from the ideal. It is still used to justify alll sorts
of badly skewed philosophies. That is why I am so wary of any sort of
mysticism. There is no way to rationally understand what the position of a
mystic is. I just feel better and cleaner if I stick to beliefs that are
verifiable or explainable and are based on a solid, knowable foundation. I
think that to put a child in the position that you found yourself in
should be actionable in a court of law. Anyway, I am very pleased that you
were able to find the strength to break away. That should allow you to
establish, if you haven't already, a new philosophy for your life and I
think the MoQ is the best place to start that I have seen.
I find no mystery in either Quallity or Dynamic Quality. In my mind
Quality is the driving force for good that came into being at the birth of
the Universe and is still that same force. It is mysterious in that I don't
know how it originated or where it came from. It is not mysterious in its
functioning. I also believe that Dynamic Quality applies to humanity only
and is the searching, questioning force that operates in our minds
subliminally and collates and projects the totality of our memories and
current
influences into our consciousness where it becomes sq. Again, it is not
knowable because it operates below the level of consciousness but it is not
impossible to describe what it does. In other words, I think the emphasis
on DQ as being unknowable is not justified.
My understanding of the MoQ is that it is at bottom an empirical means of
ordering our lives. It is true that questions arise which are not
empirically answerable but I think that this is because of the increasing
complexity of the universe under the impetus of Quality and that those
questions are empirically answerable if our minds could penetrate the
complexity. To me this does not justify admitting mysticism into the MoQ.
We can just sit back and let DQ sort it out for us.
Like you, I think that the MoQ is a workable and rational "religion" that
does not demand that we deny common sense. It does not require the carrot
of "everlasting life" to make us see its value and it can be taught to
children of all ages without warping their minds. It is a philosophy of
life that would transform the world if it were adopted universally. It is
for these reasons that I keep plugging away for the empirical
interpretation of Pirsig's philosophy. I would hate to see such a world
changing idea bastardized into a mixture of the old religions. I think that
Pirsig's view of the MoQ was empirical and that it should stay that way.
Keep in touch and let me know what you think if I have not shocked you
too much. Ken
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