From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 18 2003 - 18:34:55 BST
Dear Gert-Jan, Raine, Mark, Ray, Sam, and all lurkers,
An apology:
Most apologies don't start off with "You know what ticks me off?", but that's the way this one is going to go for a very simple reason: I'm angry at myself.
You know what ticks me off? The fact that I'm one of the most culpable agents in the on-going hostility train that is the MoQ Discussion Group. It ticks me off to no end because I feel like I used to come on here with warm and sunshiney feelings and I felt like I was helpful and nice (well, ignore the first few posts that I ever wrote) to the participants. In other words, I used to feel like I was a good conversation partner.
Not anymore. I'm grouchy, aggressive, touchy, sarcastic, cynical, and ticked off most of the time. That makes me even more angry.
I really want to apologize to everyone for being an instigator on this forum. I really only wanted to be a philosophical instigator, not somebody who stifles participation. Because of grouchiness, I feel like the main message I've tried to carry has gotten lost.
I agree with Gert-Jan when he says, "Lurkers who have the most original ideas, but don't post them because they find themselves unable to defend it enough, because of a lack of knowledge." In my opinion, I don't think the problem is that lurkers aren't smart enough or able enough or know enough. Creative ideas break convention. The problem is confidence: people don't have enough confidence in their ideas. Why? Because they see all of the negativity that goes on here, the sheer agression, and they become afraid because people generally don't like others to jump down their throats. I think Ray hits it exactly right when he says, "most threads are accompanied by a fair share of bickering between members that doesn't really lead anywhere, but is only alienating." Yes, oh yes. And I hate it. And I participate in it. That's why you'll see a line from me once in a while on how sick I am of all of this.
Some people try and put some of the blame of alienation on the use of jargon of which I might be the number one offender. And I think some people are alienated by stuff they don't understand. My suggestion has been, though, that jargon isn't the problem, talking about things that not everyone will understand isn't the problem. I think people who are alienated by stuff they don't understand are coming at the discussion group from the wrong angle. I think this angle might be one of, there a few discussions going on and they define what's being discussed. Its easy to get that feeling because there are only a few discussions going on at any one time. If we think of this discussion group as a verbal discussion group, on this analogy the room in which we are talking is infinitely large. There is nothing keeping us back from having as many conversations as we want. Like all rooms, it will get noisy, but unlike rooms with soundwaves, you can get rid of the noise with an easy
click of a button and concentrate on the conversations you want to. The only thing holding you back is time and energy: the more time and energy you have, the more conversations you can have. If you're like me, that will only be a few, but others perhaps many more. So, thats why I don't get too excited about accusations of jargon-mongering. I don't make my posts incomprehensible on purpose, they just turn out that way to some people because of the way I write, the way I conduct a conversation. The best thing about the internet, is that it isn't quite rude to ignore somebody. You just might not have anything to say so the topic just drops.
I would love it if 20 different threads opened up. I would absolutely love it. I would adore being able to say a few things about movies and Pirsig, poets and Pirsig, novelists and Pirsig, musicians and Pirsig, politics and Pirsig, education and Pirsig, and just life and Pirsig. I don't start threads up myself because I don't have the time or energy what with all the philosophy and Pirsig I end up talking about. But maybe I should take my own damn advice and just ignore some of the crap and write what I want to.
I have one last apology and this is tied up with my jargonizing and name-dropping. Like I said, I don't do it to be incomprehensible, however I am truly sorry if it comes out as condescending. My posts may sometimes end up sounding elitist because only a few people can understand them and I'm all like, "Well, I don't expect people to understand a lot of what I say if they haven't read a few of the books I've read or taken Intro, Ancient, Modern, and Contemp Philosophy classes." It does sound elitist, but that's not the intention. I don't think I'm better than everybody else because I can talk like a Philosophy Professor. That's why I'm aggressive in my call for people to do what they want with Pirsig. If they find takers, then all the better. But I don't want people to feel like I'm demanding that they talk the way I do, just as I don't want it demanded of me that I talk the way they do. A mutual language is usally something that works itself out along the way. And
if it doesn't: drop the topic. Oh well. This is playing around, all for fun, free time when we're not slaving for the Giant.
All right, enough apology. I hope it goes some way in expressing the regret I feel in participating in making the MD a warzone.
Gert-Jan raised some fine questions and I'd like to respond in quick time ('cuz I don't have a lot of time) to the questions and some people's responses:
1) I am a school teacher (children from 4 to 13) - I often get the urge to teach them the MoQ. Would it be wise? How would you do it?
I'm in the minority, but I do think its a bad idea. I think it bad because I don't think you should try and teach philosophy systematically to kids. I just don't think its a good idea because there are a lot more important things they should be learning. But, naturally, this comes out of my view that philosophy is a thing we do on the weekends.
What you can do is apply some MoQ insights like, ala Sam, make sure they know that there is good and bad, better and worse, and that this applies to everything. These are things that can be socialized into society without the need for a fullblown knowledge of a Quality Metaphysics.
7) Why is a policeman allowed to hit a hooligan, but is a teacher not allowed to hit a kid that the teacher can't reach intellectually or social? And why was it allowed in the old days? What should a teacher do, if he doesn't want to use this biological jungle-language?
I think that's a great question. I think that teachers are rightly told that they cannot hit kids, unlike cops, because kids are not fully formed adults. The trend to want to treat kids as if they are little adults is a bunk idea that has got to go. The reason kids learn so well is not that they are naturally more creative or that they are more open-minded, but because they are unpatterned. Pirsig is enough of an empiricist to agree that we are born tabula rasa, as a blank slate. However, he gets rid of Locke's image of us being passive receptors, just waiting for Nature to impress itself on us. He instead says that we accumulate patterns that sit on other patterns. A child is simply a collection of biological patterns when it is born. It first starts to acquire social and then intellectual patterns. As the patterns start to lock themselves down, they become static, immobile, common sense. Without that common sense, it is difficult to have creativity that is applic
able. Creativity is the art of breaking patterns, but I think the creativity we should cultivate, as Sam says, is that which takes in received wisdom and than transcends it, breaks it, moves on from it.
Wait, that was part of an answer to one of your other questions. Whatever--the point of that for beating kids is that one of the moral intuitions we've created is that we should not punish, especially physically, that which is still in the process of becoming patterned. Its not completely their fault, they don't know.
8) Would it change our feelings about the whole MoQ if Pirsig appeared to be an ugly child-molesting sigar smoking bold woman? (like one of Roald Dahls witches)
This is a hilarious question and I know I'm alone on this one: I do think it would change our feelings on the MoQ, though I don't think it should. Just like Heidegger's philosophy is attacked because he was a Nazi, if Pirsig were a degenerate I'm sure the reception of his philosophy would suffer. However, I think his books would be a lot more interesting, as pieces of literature, if his nickname was Lester the Molester. Do we trust the insights on morals a molester gives? Especially as Pirsig seems to endorse the idea that it does matter to a person's philosophy the way they act.
10) Is it moral to have an opinion about a President without living in his country? (looking at Culture A using the values of Culture B)
Absolutely, though I think Sam is wrong when he says "To say otherwise is to say that there is no universal scale of values." I don't know what a universal scale of values is supposed to be except an authoritative "I have found the TRUTH." Pragmatists don't think there are a universal scale of values, but they feel perfectly comfortable being open-minded ethnocentrists and basing their decisions off of their inheirited patterns, all the while looking for new patterns.
And I think Ray's answer is bloody brilliant:
"Of course. For example, French criticism of US involvement in Iraq, although dramatic and sometimes low-handed, was significantly moral because IT WAS FRENCH. French government was only able to question American foreign policy and the president, because it had its own set of values. Without values, what can you possibly say about a president? Nothing. But since France maintained a separate set of values regarding the Iraq crisis, they maintained the ability and the need to criticise the US. To be blunt, I would also say that most people have a strong opinion regarding Hitler, although most of them never lived in Germany."
Simple minds my ass.
Gotta' go. Keep it up, everyone. I want more responses, please. Make me feel like I haven't damaged the group.
Matt
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