Diana, David B and Foci.
Diana wrote:
> Do native Americans talk too loud and about themselves all the
> time? Is this plain-spoken? I've never spoken to any that I'm >
aware of, though I have observed a few in Vancouver and they
> actually seemed sort of shy and reticent
Er..I believe P says that the Indians are the masters of restraint in
talk and economy in action (when adding a log to the teepee fire. In
LILA page 46 he writes "....he (the Indian) wants you to either
speak from the heart or keep quiet....".
If anyone speaks loudly about themselves it must be the regular
Americans [grin]. Interesting about your Vancouver observation. My
wife and I went to Vancouver Island in 1993 and I saw some
inhabitants of a reservation there and I had exactly the same
impression of shyness and reticence. However, I don't think that is
some indigenous trait, but rather something that comes from their
uneasiness re the white culture. Among themselves - and at the
time when they dominated the land - they were probably as
outgoing as anyone else.
The Indian issue is obviously some important stage in P's road to
the final MOQ. It's easy in retrospect to regard it as one grand
revelation flash that was more or less complete already in the
ZAMM, but it was really a long winding path - the longest leg of
which was the anthropological one. P tells that he actually planned
a treatise on Indians to prove that value was the motivating force
rather than Boas' objectivity (I guess that means environment
changes etc.), but eventually reached a point when he understood
that the anthro. project was a dead end.
For the real-world Pirsig that first attempt took place shortly after
the publication and success of ZAMM. I have a newspaper clipping
from August 5 1974 where a reporter visits P in a camper truck in
the Montana wilderness surrounded by anthropological books,
plugging away at his portable typewriter on a manuscript he
tentatively calls "Those Pesky Indians". A few years later he has
got himself a sailboat and spends the vacations (or possibly full
time) plying the Great Lakes visiting, among other places,
Cleveland Harbour. I can only guess, but some new insight
triggered by the Sidis episode (?) has set him on to a new course
that peaked in the ZuŅi example which meant the first
(dynamic/static) development of the MOQ proper. In the spring or
summer of 1980 he sailed to Europe and the necessary trip to the
Atlantic ocean obviously inspired the the LILA settings, but I firmly
believe that the honing out of the static levels weren't completed
until much later. But all this we will reach in our "slow" reading.
DMB wrote:
> OK, my posts were meant to provide examples, but now I'm just
> starting to feel like a forum hog.
If I understand the 'hog' allusion correctly you feel a nuisance, but
don't. For my part - being a partly burned out case - I am more than
pleased to have a "successor" hog :-) But really, it's a pleasure to
read your pieces - some of them are remarkable, one from way
back an ouright masterpiece. Well, most of the original LSers are
more or less burned out or has moved to the MD, but that does not
mean that the MOQ has lost its attraction hopefully. Not to me at
least, its explanatory power doesn't stop amazing me. May I offer a
new-fangled example?
Over here new research has been published about fish(Norwegians
you know!!) being more advanced than earlier supposed, possibly
sensing pain in the same way as mammals and that fish-farm
slaughtering techniques must be improved to avoid suffering. All
very well, but the subject-object perspective makes it absurd.
"Sensing" and/or "suffering" imply "feeling" which evokes
"perceiving" which in turn sounds uncannily like "awareness". Enter
the MOQ and the knot is cut because it's not any quantum
matter/mind jump where animals, fish, insects and plants are either
biological machinery working by instincts, or they perceive in some
mysterious semi-hemi-demi-aware way. In the MOQ it's a rising
scale of experience/value and no mind enters any matter.
The (my) MOQ explanation will take too long to put down in detail
here, but if anyone wants to see it I will deliver. It's great to have a
new theory of reality that splits the SOM fog as if by magic, but
does anyone want an explanation that clears things up? Ha!! I
heard a radio discussion between a researcher and a fishery
organization representative and the limit of nonsense reached great
heights.
Thanks for listening to my rambling.
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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