From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Jun 12 2003 - 22:41:01 BST
Hi Rick,
Hang on a second...you wrote:
>He describes this individuality as "blasphemy" and warns that...
Just to be clear, what I decried as blasphemy was much more general.
Individuality isn't blasphemy, it isn't even immoral today. I said:
"Patterns should do what they should, people should be moral. That should
be obvious, but instead people feel pattens should be thwarted. That's
nothing short of blasphemy, which IS still a crime in my state."
In other words, blasphemy is to deny or otherwise purposefully malign the
moral imperative in general, to say that morality should be thwarted because
it is bad. That is the equivilent in religious terminology of blasphemy,
saying that God is bad. The terms I would use to describe individuality and
breakdown of the pattern of lifelong marriage are "sad" and "alrming", but
not "blasphemous." Most people who are the perpetrators of this
individuality and who get divorced are doing it because it is now - sadly -
expected of them. It is the greatest apparent good. They are being moral,
not blasphemous, and following the tradition of the culture, which is very
different now from what you describe it as being hundreds of years ago.
That USED to be the tradition 500 years ago, but tradition was different 100
years ago, and tradition is different today. Tradition isn't static, it
changes. (Nothing is really static, now is it?)
>But as the man said, "...the
>courage to love [is] the courage to affirm one's own experience against
>tradition..." Here's hoping Johnny Moral can find this sort of courage.
It would be much less courageous for me to go along with the culture and
just let marriage be abolished, just chase amor where ever it beckons me
like most people do. That's what I have always done in the past, and it
sure has been easy. I've never married, I've even had an adulterous affair
because it was so amorous (which i regret terribly and won't do again.
she's divorced now and may be better off, but he was hurting for a long
time, or so I heard). Was that courageous of me? Chasing amor really
takes no courage if it is what everyone is doing. It's recklessness not
courage..
Now in case anyone points out that I am being immoral and advocating
immorality by wanting to change expected behavior: yes, that's what I am
doing. But note that I don't say that this (relatively new) social moral
pattern should be changed because it is a social moral pattern, I am not
being blasphemous, or disrespectful of morality. I say that it should be
changed for the intellectual reason that allowing it to propogate will
result in that litany of bad things I keep repeating, like reproduction
becoming production, people no longer being the living manifestation of
their parents unity and love. Making this currently immoral argument (which
my character compells me to make) will hopefully change people's wills and
cause them to value marriage with a new understanding of its meaning and
importance, and hence change their behavior and begin to re-establish the
pattern of marriage as life-long and meaningful.
And it takes some amount of courage to take this position in todays
repressive intellectual environment. It is risky to put my name to it (I
once sent an email from work to my state reps in support of a marriage
ammendment here, signed personally with no company footer, just my home
address, and one fascist rep actually contacted my boss in an effort to get
me in trouble. I really thought I might lose my job when I was called into
the boss's office. I had to send another letter saying those were my
personal views, not the company's, etc. There's no way the state rep could
have thought I was representing the company, just cause it says
companyname.com in my email address. Does anyone think I am speaking now on
behalf of Hotmail? It was just harrasment. By a state rep! grrr.
Rick brings up a valid point that people's reproduction used to be
controlled by arranged marriages. Whatever we think of arranged marriages,
they aren't the only alternative to cloning and state controlled
reproduction. There is a little wiggle-room between these things, Rick. It
is not ironic at all that as a pattern evolves, where it came from, and
where it doesn't want to go, are quite similar. The place marriage wants to
go is a voluntary, loving, life-long union between a man and a woman to
create equality for all of humanity.
And, I wonder if Pirsig ever used 'the Giant' to refer to anything other
than the economic system? Did he call the church the Giant?
Johnny
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