From: john williams (ducati900@bigpond.com)
Date: Mon Jan 13 2003 - 02:11:53 GMT
Hi Patrick
Thank you for your response it has given me a bit to think about.
Patrick said:
This positive feeling, the delurance of the power of the 'I', can thus
> be *causally* explained. In this light we might understand Pirsig's
> motivation to look with another pair of glasses to what we call
> 'causality' (i.e. his claim that 'a has caused b' means 'b favors
> pre-condition a'). We also might understand that the enlightened state
> is all about 'living in the now', i.e. fully allowing undefinable,
> uncertain DQ to do its work.
Do you agree with Pirsigs idea 'a has caused b' means 'b favors
pre-condition a'. While reading this I was thinking yeah your saying it but
I'm not agree with you, what am I missing? Anyone else got an opinion?
As to Platts question about an influx of Muslems, What has the fact that
they are Muslems got to do with it, surely the problems are caused by all
organized religions and their Fundamentalists.
The only thing I can't tolerate is intolerance.
John from The Rock
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick van den Berg" <cirandar@yahoo.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2003 2:49 AM
Subject: Re: MD No to absolutism
> Hi John, Platt, others,
>
> (Sorry for the many parantheses, I hope you can follow the gist of this
> post.)
>
> > Do you believe in the 'good' of men?
> >
> > Self interest is a greater motivator, If it is seen that being good is
> > the
> > best option then thats how the majority will go. I have no doubt that
> > my
> > community would pin me to the wall if it would keep their own family
> > safe.
> > Personal freedom will be the first thing to go in our brave new world.
>
> To respond on the first sentence (although the other few lines is I
> think a very brief but sharp analysis): Yes. I fear that you are right:
> that people aren't good in principle; and (what I left unsaid) that
> their wrongdoings are due merely to bad conditioned habits
> (evolutionary, culturally) or due to personal trauma's in childhood, but
> indeed: that self-interest is a greater motivator than the motivation to
> act in Accordance with the Good.
> A certain mystic has said once that the whole human race suffers from a
> disease: the ego. What I know from the enlightened state, is that it
> seems that a spin-off of this state is that you're not selfish anymore.
> Hate as a feeling disappears (although everything else remains exactly
> the same, although 180 degrees reversed, as a dutch Zen-disciple has
> said). Philosophically, it all boils down to the nature of time, or
> rather: causality. Evolutionary theory is 100% a causal theory. We
> humans pride ourselves with our intellect. Abstactizing, imagining
> scenario's that might happen, was evolutionary benefitial, 'cause
> imagining cases in which you die while hunting obviously doesn't result
> in you actually dying, etc. But abstractizing means holding on to static
> concepts. So the 'I' was born. Thus, natural selection 'favored' humans
> that imagined things (and thus created static constructs, and thus the
> 'I'), by creating (bad word, bad word) a positive feeling (call it
> 'curiousity') when humans engaged in this imaginative thinking. (note
> that I divide subjective feelings and causal powers... to explain why I
> do so, see the 'emergence'-thread...)
>>
> (I sometimes wonder if an enlightened person would care to pursue a
> career in string-theory. Theoretical physics is all about finding (or
> 'creating') static constructs by which you can build up (compute) every
> known phenomenon in the physical world.)
>
> In summary, the selfisness of man is an artifact of some sort in the
> causal game of evolution. You can interpet the proposition 'all men are
> good in principle' in two ways. First, you can think this is a 'true'
> proposition, since you might conceive that we all were born without the
> 'I' being formed yet (tabula rasa), . (and, there are humans who have
> attained enlightenment). Second, you can think this is a 'false'
> statement, because humans are so easily and massively delured to fall
> into the trap of imaginative thinking (creating s-constructs or
> absolutes, creating an 'I') once we reach the age of two: humans are a
> fluke of nature, because the game of causality drags them down in
> particular, compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.
>
> Hm, Platt, and Kevin also, if you've come this far: I find writing these
> philophical things (good or bad) so much easier than discussing ethics
> and answering the question of what we ought to do. I'd like to delve
> deeper in intellectual ponderings, instead of creating a strong opinion
> about e.g. racial issues and decide to act in spite of all doubts and
> incomplete knowledge... But of course I think about political issues (in
> 10 days, we in the Netherlands have elections again). The summary of the
> political debate in the Netherlands by GJ was a good one by the way.
> Maybe soon I'll 'stick my neck out', and give an attackable political
> opinion on certain issues in dutch society... Wim, I hope you will give
> your opinion, as Platt asked us dutchmen, on muslim groups and the whole
> of political matters in geneneral currently at hand here in Holland...
>
> Friendly greetings, Patrick.
>
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