From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Nov 16 2002 - 16:13:29 GMT
Hi Barritt:
A warm welcome to the discussion. You raise a most interesting
question:
> Platt, is this discussion board a static pattern of intellectual value? is
> it a dynamic pattern? Some great things get said, still it's not Zen is
> it.
Since this discussion board is primarily intellectual, I doubt if there's
much Zen to it, at least if I understand Zen rightly. But, the process of
intellectualizing is dynamic to some extent in that thoughts are often
unpatterned until they are spoken or written down. As someone once
said, "I don't know what I think until I say it." Some people can't write as
they think and never change a word. Those are potentially the really
dynamic ones. On the other hand, there are those like me who tend to
write and rewrite, working and reworking the patterns of meaning.
The whole topic of "thought" is endlessly fascinating, mostly because
it's so mysterious when you start to think about it (meta-thinking). One
thing we can be reasonably sure of: Thinking has great value. In fact,
without values we cannot think at all, for we value the words and the
patterns of meaning we think with. In other words, thinking is highly
moral.
So, my answer to your question is that this discussion board is indeed
a static pattern of intellectual value, but the thinking that precedes the
pattern that gets written down and preserved here is sometimes very
dynamic. You can usually tell the dynamic part by the "freshness" of
the way the thought is expressed using ordinary words. (Many
academics try to fake dynamic thinking by using big balloon words or
making up new ones.) I guess the Zen part comes in with each
individual's judgment of what looks new and "fresh" to him.
Platt
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