From: Patrick van den Berg (cirandar@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Nov 24 2002 - 19:21:49 GMT
Hi focus-fellows,
DAVOR wrote:
This view is actually a great anlytical tool in psychology, think of the
things you hate and you will see that it are the things you hate of
yourself. Why do we love Pirsig, we love him for the things we love
ourselves.
PAT:
Yes, I tend to agree with this analytic tool in psychology which you
refer to here, although I didn't give it much attention when I
encountered it in my studies or in "Without borders" (Zonder grenzen,
Dutch) by Ken Wilber. But I think Pirsig would agree with you. In my
first/second year I had a very good teacher of social psychology, and
when I (re)read the passage at hand here in my copy of lila I was
thinking about a lecture of him. The model he presented was simply this:
When we do an exam (for example) and we flunk/fail, we have a tendency
to blame it on the bad textbook, or that the teacher was bad. When we
pass the exam, however, we attribute our succes to ourselves, we passed
it because we're so intelligent, etc.
To get back to you and Pirsig, remember he talked in Zen about walking
on the sand or something, that there are so many things in our immediate
perception, but that we can attend to only a very tiny fraction of it?
Well, I think in daily life that we're 'repressing' signals from the
media (war in Bosnia for example, in the nineties), what happens on the
street (homeless people), when we're shopping (buying meat from
mass-bio-industries), and what we think of concerning our own problems.
All these are signals that ask for our attention in the bits and bytes
ocean of our lives. Of course, we HAVE to ignore a lot of things,
otherwise you'll go insain... but we should be careful not to ignore the
important signals in ourselves and in our environment. Sometimes we have
to choose and accept our responsibility in some way or another: Just
because there's too much shit in the world about which we can do so
little, doesn't mean we should ignore EVERYTHING, and do nothing or only
talk about these things in academic circles or in a forum like this one.
I mean, sure, the world's a complex thing, but it might be good for me
or you to become a vegetarian for example.
ERIN wrote:
I was trying to figure out why a goal of no attachment
differs from a goal of 'not valuing'.
That is to value something but not be attached.
I can see how being overly attached something
can prevent you from being open to DQ and
maybe that the killing static patterns was about
detaching yourself from them?
PAT:
Yea, as Wim pointed out, 'killing' static patterns is a an inapt
metaphor Pirsig uses. Similarly, when he talks about 'karma', I feel
he's really talking about something like 'responsibility'. (That's
perhaps a failure or Pirsig in his work, that he twists meanings of
words and calls everything 'quality' or 'values' or 'morals' and all.
Anyway.)
To value something but not be attached... that's good. Maybe too much
attachment leads to too much self-awareness... I recognize this when I'm
playing squash, for instance. When I begin to play after being absorbed
in different activities and am sort of still in it when I begin to play,
I often play much better than later in the game. Only when I think "oh
my, I'm playing GOOD this time!"-then I create
the-static-pattern-of-expecting-to-continue-playing-this-good- and such
a self-awareness usually knocks me out of my play, in a minor way.
Anyway, think I'm taking a side-walk here again, but then again, I don't
KNOW how it is to be an enlightened one who's not attached to anything.
WIM wrote:
Just retaliating, going to war, 'ending a regime' won't do. We must be
aware
of our own 'clinging to static patterns', too and strive to dynamise our
reactions.
PAT:
Yes, that's in one sentence what we ought to do- only it remains
abstract, not concrete. What ARE we to do then? I don't know, do you?
Anyway, it's your turn now, Wim!
Friendly greetings, Patrick.
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