From: Patrick van den Berg (cirandar@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Feb 02 2003 - 14:49:21 GMT
Hi,
I was very curious to see Moq-ists like Erin, Glenn, Marri and Platt
read and reply on GJ's mail, and also the more Level-devotees (I'm
ashamed to say I never was one so far!). You all understand the MoQ very
well, and GJ's rather boldy proposed project to fit things like Reiki
into the MoQ hit a chord in me, and I hoped it would in others also. But
maybe there is a difference between the Dutch and American cultures
here. I've never been in America, but it seems that over there (for me)
at least outside the academic world psychic phenomena and healing by
prayer to plants or by laying on hands are much more accepted in terms
of folk-knowledge.
I see it in the literature, read Donna Tartt, A Secret History, or The
little friend: Tartt describes in different places that people sense
someone is looking at them, and also there are frequent occasions of
synchronicities in the story-line. Then take a dutch author like Adriaan
van Dis, in 'Indische Duinen' for example: he makes meat of his family
devoted to floaty new age, and actually, the quality of his scientismic
attitude against them is quite high.
Here in Holland, when you say to people that you believe in psi (or
aura's or chakra's), you provoce the same discussion over and over
again, about scientism as both a method and a worldview (which nearly
always implicitely goes hand in hand in people) on the one side, and the
floaty new age holistic worldview on the other. Just like the
hippie-culture now, most people have a negative aftertaste of the term
'new age' and thereby everything that's associated with it. The
worldview of scientism nearly always wins, although often people do
admit that they believe 'there's more between heaven and earth'.
Scientism as a worldview (not only as a method) is in the head of many
people. It's a huge static intellectual construct. It's adaptable, too,
but establisged dogma is strong. Right now, there's no bridge between
the scientismic and the new-age-worldview. GJ points out to us that the
Metaphysics of Quality is potentially able to provide this bridge.
Problem is, we need to find a hard-working Darwin(s) that puts the 1%
part of inspiration, to the 99% part of hard rational and empirical work
that is needed establish this bridge, and make scientism and (ugly, ugly
name) new age one worldview. Isn't it so that at least hundred years
before Darwin's The Origin of Species, many people have voiced a strong
intuition in favor of an evolutionary theory like the one Darwin finally
formulated, but, crucially, backed up with a huge amount of observations
of similar birds on different nearby islands and all? Nowadays scientism
(as both a method and a worldview now) considers Darwin as the father of
evolutionary theory, just like Newton in Physics and astronomy.
So, how long will it take before the Darwins rise up? The age in the
beginning of the twentyfirst-century is different than Darwin's age. The
memetic infrastructure has drastically changed, see the internet and the
many more book-writers and scientists around here now, than was the case
150 years ago. So there might be Darwins out there already, like Dean
Radin or Rupert Sheldrake, only they are outshouted by the many more
other book-writers and scientists. And, the nature of the topic is of
course also different. As Thomas in his recent MoQ-essay says he is a
self-admitted 'splitter', there are a lot of 'lumpers' out there, and I
am one of them. I mean, like GJ I lump reiki, laying on hands,
psychokinesis, pre-cognition, aura's, reincarnation-theories, chakra's
and so forth all together on one pile. That's the new age heritage, who
embraces them all. But maybe it's likely that there are a lot of areas
of potential scientific knowledge and practice waiting for mankind, that
turn out to be fundamentally different eventually. Maybe the difference
between pre-cognition and telepathy, for example, is the same as the
difference between the senses of touch and seeing. And the theory of
chakra's and of aura's might denote different potential scientific
disciplines such as geology and meteorology today.
If you come this far, thanks for your time and patience. Cheers to the
contemporary Darwins among us.
Greetings, Patrick.
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