Andrea, David(s)
ANDREA HAD WRITTEN:
If the man is a mystic, or a MOQist (:)) he knows nevertheless that there is *no*
future, ie, that the concept of future is illusory. In fact, the 'goodness' of a
future hospital is nothing that can be immediately perceived (as MOQ prescribes value
to be defined by immediate perception). In the immediate, the man actually feels that
*collecting money to build a hospital in Africa is the good thing to do (now)*
MARCO HAD ANSWERED:
The MOQish is NOT mystic. He does not think that the future is illusion, he just think
that in order to attain (a future) Quality, one has to be an artist in the present
(remember the motorcycle maintenance).
ANDREA WROTE:
Now that's strange. As far as I remember, the only difference RMP assumes between
himself and a mystic is the attempt to analyze Quality with metaphysical tools. As far
as personal ethics goes, I can't remember any single passage in Lila or ZAMM that
establishes any substantial difference between a MOQist and a mystic.
PIRSIG HAD WRITTEN IN LILA (my emphasis):
«What made all this so formidable to Phaedrus was that he himself had insisted in his
book that Quality cannot be defined. Yet here he was about to define it. Was this
some kind of a sell-out? His mind went over this many times.
A part of it said, "Don't do it. You'll get into nothing but trouble. You're just
going to start up a thousand dumb arguments about something that was perfectly clear
until you came along. You're going to make ten thousand opponents and zero friends
because the
moment you open your mouth to say one thing about the nature of reality you
automatically have a whole set of enemies who've already said reality is something
else."
The trouble was, this was only one part of himself talking. There was another part
that kept saying, "Ahh, do it anyway. It's interesting."
This was the intellectual part that didn't like undefined things, and telling it not
to define Quality was like telling a fat man to stay out of the refrigerator, or an
alcoholic to stay out of bars. To the intellect the process of defining Quality has a
compulsive quality of its own. It produces a certain excitement even though it leaves
a hangover afterward, like too many cigarettes, or a party that has lasted too long.
Or Lila last night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy forever. What would
you call it? Degeneracy, he guessed. WRITING A METAPHYSISCS IS, IN THE STRICTEST
MYSTIC SENSE, A DEGENERATE ACTIVITY.
But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless, doctrinaire avoidance of
degeneracy is a DEGENERACY OF ANOTHER SORT. That's the degeneracy fanatics are made
of. Purity, identified, ceases to be purity. Objections to pollution are a form of
pollution. The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with
fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born—and to whose birth
no thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for being something less
pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of
life.
That was all he had to say to the mystic objections to a Metaphysics of Quality. He
next turned to those of logical positivism.»
MARCO:
Well, Andrea, maybe you are right that the difference RMP assumes between himself and
a mystic is the attempt to analyze Quality with metaphysical tools. What I don't
accept is that *only*. It's like to say that the *only* difference between an
abstainer and an alcoholic is that the latter drinks whisky. We can well cut it with
the famous razor... and the sentence sounds better: a MOQist analyzes Quality
(Reality)... and this is not *only* at all.
ANDREA WROTE:
Now *if* there is no "official" difference between MOQist and mystic morals, and you
claim there is one, you must be expressing a personal belief about one of them. I
think you got the mystics wrong.
MARCO:
It's true that I don't know a lot about mysticism...IMO 3WD is right: mystics are very
rare. Anyway if I got it wrong, I got it from your words, in this occasion. Sticking
to your example, I've never said that mystics don't want to save the children. Just
that if it was true what you wrote that "he [the mystic] knows nevertheless that there
is *no* future, ie, that the concept of future is illusory" , well, it means IMO that
a mystic attitude will not save the children of your example. You have reminded me of
ZAMM....
PIRSIG HAD WRITTEN (in ZAMM):
« But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on
the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phædrus raised
his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the
end of the exchange.
Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for
Phædrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such
things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He
left the classroom, left India and gave up ».
MARCO:
Inadequate.... not wrong. YES! It's not wrong to pray for those children: it's
inadequate. In the end, I think that probably the MOQ *seems* very mystic from our
Western viewpoint... while probably it is very Down-to-Earth from a mystic viewpoint
(if any).
====================
DAVID LIND:
I don't think you'll find anything in mystic teachings that state that mystics believe
what you imply.
MARCO:
The phrase "The mystic believes that "there is *no* future, ie, that the concept of
future is illusory", was not mine, but Andrea's. As said above, I don't know a lot
about mysticism, but I do believe that if you want to save the children (Andrea's
example) you can't go on thinking that future (as well as the past, read the ZAMM
quotes I offered) is illusory...
I think the priests who are in Africa to help people must be a bit less mystic than
the ones living in a monastery. Then, of course, I don't blame mystics. It's not their
fault if people die for hunger, but also it's not mysticism that cures hunger.
Shalom to you too....
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