From: Erin N. (enoonan@kent.edu)
Date: Sun Jul 13 2003 - 02:57:50 BST
>===== Original Message From moq_discuss@moq.org =====
>Hey Erin, David and Boeree,
>Thought this was an interesting thread and that I might quickly weave a
>thought in...
>
>> >Erin wrote:
>> >I know this hierarchy has been compared to Maslow's self-actualization/
>> >hierarchy of needs, where lower needs need to be met for further needs. I
>> >mean supposedly the unabomber was an intelligent mathematician but he's
>not
>> >really on my top 10 list of most moral people,...
>> >
>> >dmb says:
>> >The unabomber, I think, pretty well demonstrates what Maslow and so many
>> >others have found. Although he was brilliant in some ways, the man was
>also
>> >quite damaged.
>>
>> Erin:
>> Well putting people in the mentally ill category
>> is what many people did to Pirsig. Doesn't help
>> clarify at all.
>
>> BOEREE: Another point is that he asks that we pretty much take care of our
>> lower needs before self-actualization comes to the forefront. And yet we
>can
>> find many examples of people who exhibited at very least aspects of
>> self-actualization who were far from having their lower needs taken care
>of.
>> Many of our best artists and authors, for example, suffered from poverty,
>bad
>> upbringing, neuroses, and depression. Some could even be called
>psychotic!
>> If you think about Galileo, who prayed for ideas that would sell, or
>> Rembrandt, who could barely keep food on the table, or Toulouse Lautrec,
>whose
>> body tormented him, or van Gogh, who, besides poor, wasn't quite right in
>the
>> head, if you know what I mean... Weren't these people engaged in some
>form of
>> self-actualization? The idea of artists and poets and philosophers (and
>> psychologists!) being strange is so common because it has so much truth to
>it!
>
>R
>I think that the case of the unabomber and these other examples that Boeree
>brings up is a problem of "over-actualization" or in MoQ jargon, a person
>being dominated by intellectual values (ideas) to the point that all other
>values are muted, or entirely drowned out. A value inequity like this
>hampers one's ability to function socially and mentally and can manifest
>itself in all sorts of ways that might be destructive to the individual,
>those around him or even to society at large. Van Gogh was so absorbed by
>his vision that he lost the ability to behave rationally, Rembrandt couldn't
>feed his family. Ted Kaczynski was so driven by his vision that he became
>willing to sacrifice any and every other value (home, family, job, human
>contact, human life) in it's name.
>
>take care
>rick
>
>Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your
>aim. - George Santayana
>
>
I agree with this and for me the best way not to mute them out is to recognize
all three levels in a person. I like to read the characters as aspects of
Pirsig, not Pirsig as just Pheadrus.
Erin
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