Mary and Squad:
Thanks for the timely report on your talk. I was anxious to find out how
it went. And bravo for having the courage to make the presentation in
spite of your fears! I'd say you were too hard on yourself in the
report, but maybe I'd have to have been there to be a judge of that. In
any case, perfection isn't a realistic goal.
I once attended a book-store discussion at which Dr. Ron DiSanto,
co-author of "The Guidbook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance", presented Pirsig's ideas to a group of 50 or 60 book
lovers. The book store owners had invited him and several other
speakers, each presenting a different TRAVEL book!! The sponsors of the
evening thought ZZM was a book for potential tourists! The audience was
there to hear about vacations and cross-country road trips! How absurd!
Talk about floating like a lead balloon! You should have seen the blank
stares when Dr. DiSanto starting talking in philosophical terms. They
were like deers hypnotized by the headlights of an oncoming truck. Honk!
Honk! I remember saying to him that "its a lot like planning an evening
to talk about Moby Dick and other books about WHALES ! " DiSanto and I
had a good laugh about the dorky misunderstanding.
By comparison, ten Unitarian Humanists who are already curious is a much
easier crowd. Some people have suggested that the audience needs to be
understood well for the MOQ sermon. But I don't see how it would help to
get any more specific about who these people are. Do we need urine
samples and personality profile tests to explain a concept? Dallas area
Unitarian Humanists is as specific as it gets.
I'm also suspicious of the idea that the MOQ should be presented as a
solution to some kind of personal problem. I forget who suggested that?
Anyway, I think the danger in needing to believe something is obvious.
The potential for intellectual dishonesty is great when the need to
believe is strong. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we can divest
ourselves of our feelings and emotions and I think that "objectivity" is
not only amoral, it is impossible. I'm just saying the MOQ was not
invented as a form of therapy, even if it happens to work as one in some
cases. That aspect of the MOQ should be left to individual readers to
discover for themselves.
Another point I'd like to make concerns the level of detail in a
presentation. I've noticed a kind of fixation with the four levels.
Frankly, I'm a little bored with the cold, mechanical feel of these
explainations. And I'm a big fan of the MOQ! I imagine it would put most
people into a deep coma.
Think of it this way. If you had to explain your automoblie to a person
who had never seen one, what would you say first? Would you launch into
a description of the spark plugs, rods and pistons? Would you mention
Henry Ford of Mel Gibson? Would you begin with a lesson is traffic laws?
Would you tell the listener how gasoline, plastic, glass and steel are
manufactured? None of these lessons would make any sense to a person who
has never seen a car. It's too much detail. It's too advanced for the
listener. No matter how correct the information is, the listener won't
grasp any of it and will walk away with no idea what the thing is.
If the MOQ is that car, then we not only know what it is, we drive it
around, we know about the inventor and his influences and we spend alot
of time under the hood tickering around to explore every detail of the
inner workings. A presentation of the MOQ that would include that much
detail is bound to take many hours.
I like this month's game very much because it give us all the chance to
step back from the MOQ. Its a chance to look at the whole thing at once,
instead of getting under the hood. Now we're halfway thru the month.
What do you say? Lets weld the hood shut for the next couple of weeks,
step back and admire the shape and color of the body's contours instead.
Lets just wash and wax the car. Put the tools away and appraise the
total value of the vehicle.
Lets start by saying to the one who has never seen a car, "well, its a
machine that carries people farther and faster than feet or horses can
go..."
David B.
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jan 17 2002 - 13:08:39 GMT