From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Aug 01 2004 - 00:21:26 BST
DM, Paul and all:
David Morey said:
I do not know Wilber but will try to take a look some time. There are
clearly
many links and commonalities with Pirsig. In the anti-SOM brother/sisterhood
we should concentrate on getting SOM put in its place rather than arguing
about who is most consistently non-SOM.
dmb says:
I don't know who's arguing about that. It sounds like that proverbial
hobgoblin, foolish consistency. In any case, Like Pirsig, scientific
materialism is one of Wilber's central issues. Pirsig's term is SOM, but
Wilber's "flatland" refers to the same mistaken world view. They both
describe scientific objectivity as a hollow and empty world view and both
assert an expanded and more integrated view as a cure for it. Its more than
likely that there are some details where they differ, but they have
diagnosed the same problem, they have come up with the same solution, and
they share essential features. An expanded idea of evolution is central to
both. Both adopt the perennial philosophy. Both suggest that evolution is
personal AND cultural. Both incorporate the wisdom of the East. As said,
there must be some points of disagreement between them, but I don't yet know
of any. If something of importance were found, I'd be a little surprized.
Morey said:
I find there is stuff to add to Pirsig from many sources, Barfield, Jung,
Heidegger, Bergson, Whitehead, Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake, Hegel, Schelling,
Coleridge, Arthur Gibson, Bohm, Arthur M Young, Prigogine, Roy Bhaskar and
others. Some of us need to spread our reading out sometimes.
dmb says:
Sure, Pirsig stands on the sholders of giants and lots of lesser people are
in on the same discussion too. There is no shortage of relevant thinkers to
import for the purposes of comparison and clarity. This is why I get irked
by the importation of thinkers who do not compare to or clarify the MOQ.
Maybe it would be interesting to make a list of thinkers who would mock the
MOQ and otherwise dispute it. Its a long list, I'm sure.
Morey:
As far as religion is concerned I think that we need a new understanding to
emerge that will put religion and science in a new context and that will
contain the best of both.
dmb replies:
Right. Putting them in a larger framework. This is another thing they have
in common. That's exactly what Pirsig and Wilber are up to.
David M:
And thanks again for your posts that are always well written and clearly
state what your position is, something I certainly do not always manage,
but I do have a life, job, wife, etc to attend to as well.
dmb says:
Not me. I don't have a life, a job, a wife, house or anything like that. (I
don't have a four year old son named Max nor a Aussie Shepard named cricket
either.) I'm just a disembodied mind floating around in cyberspace, waiting
for the chance to carefully write something with quotes, examples and
explanations. Its all I do and describes the totality of my ghost-like
existence. There are advantages, but rollercoasters and the smell of baking
bread just aren't the same without a body. Neither is nookie.
> DMB quoted Wilber:
> "the core of the perennial philosophy is the view that reality is
> composed of various LEVELS OF EXISTENCE - levels of being and knowing -
> ranging from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit. Each senior
> dimension transcends but includes its juniors, so that this is a
> conception of wholes within wholes within wholes indefinitely, reaching
> from dirt to divinity."
>
> Paul quoted Pirsig:
> "Just as every biological pattern is also inorganic, but not all
> inorganic patterns are biological; and just as every social [pattern] is
> also biological, although not all biological patterns are social; so
> every intellectual pattern is social although not all social patterns
> are intellectual."
> Pirsig:
> "The MOQ does not rest on faith. In the MOQ faith is very low quality
> stuff, a willingness to believe falsehoods."
> Pirsig:
> "When you hear the words 'spirit' and 'faith' always look for a
> traditional religionist trying to sneak his goods in the back door.
> ...like the positivists, the MOQ drops spirit and faith, cold."
>
> Wilber:
> "Its no accident that wars fought in hole or part in the name of a
> particular mythic Deity have historically kelled more human beings that
any
> other intentional force on the planet. The enlightenment pointed out -
quite
> rightly- that religious claims hiding from evidence are not the voice of
God
> or Goddess, but merely the voice of men or women, who usually come with
big
> guns and bigger egos. Power, not truth, drives claims that hide from
> evidence."
>
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