Hello Focs: Gotta start by thanking Jaap and Rick for their Thoreau posts.
Now we're talking! I've got two cents to add, but first want to address
Diana.
Diana, please forgive my unpublished response to your April 1 post. I
thought it was an April fool's day gag. (Is it just an American holiday?) I
didn't intend to mock you and only imagined that I was getting in on the
gag. It was just for fun. You know roaming bands of re-decorating barbarian
transvestites and all. Clearly, it was not meant to be taken seriously.
Please forgive me.
Also, what prompted you to suggest that I re-read the posts? This will
probably seem defensive or arrogant, but I really don't think my reading
comprehension skills are a problem. In fact, I was top of my class. Sure, it
was a very small college, but still, my score was 97 or 98% comprehension.
Obviously I mis-read the intent of your April 1st post. I'm sorry about
that, but generally speaking, I don't have much trouble in that area. Then
again maybe that's not what you mean at all and I'm just bragging for no
good reason. Sorry bout that too.
I hope the Thoreau thread will re-kindle your interest in this topic. There
must be countless unexplored directions and additions to a topic as broad as
freedom and order. There lots of room for creativity and for bringing fresh
material to the topic. For example, I think Jaap and Rick served up some
delicious posts. I hope EVERYONE gets jazzed about Thoreau or bring some
equally relevant thinker to the table. Some thoughts on H.D.Thoreau topic...
I met an educator and text book writer named John Gardner. He wrote a book
that was ultimately given the title of "Heralds of the American Spirit". It
was about Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau, each of whom the author admired
greatly. But he wasn't happy about the title of the book and explained that
it was even wrong. He said it gave the wrong impression, that they heralded
an American spirit. But what he meant and what the book should have been
titled was "American Heralds of the Spirit". The publishers wouldn't go for
it. He and I explained all this to point out that there is nothing
particularly American about "the spirit" Gardner was talking about. It
wasn't a nationalistic textbook, a the title might suggest. Emerson, Whitman
and Thoreau were very much American, but the spirit they helped to usher in
transcends nations and such. Which brings us to Rick's issue...
Civil Disobedience is so conspicuously relevant to this month's topic! I'm
ashamed for failing to bring it up earlier. I dare say it is one of the
central concepts that drives American history AND we can see the spirit of
it over and over again in Lila. Pirsig's sympathy for the contrarian, for
the outsiders, for the restless souls who feel oppressed by conventional
reality. We can even see something like civil disobedience in the Brujo's
behaviour. We see it in John Browne's crusade. Doesn't take too much of a
strech to even in the same kind of defiance in the intellectual attitudes of
Phaedrus. Its huge. We see it in the civil rights protests of the 50's and
60's too, when black Americans sat at "whites-only" lunch counters or
refused to sit at the back of the bus. Civil Disobedience is supposed to be
about the kind of unlawful activity that isn't degenerate, its creative and
Dynamic. It ties in with the whole issue of distinquishing between common
criminals and saintly culture-bearers.
If anyone has see a movie called "Stigmata", please talk to me about freedom
and order. Anyone see it yet? Its awfully Hollywood, but its also about
freedom, order and mysticism. Something a MOQer might like. Just wanted to
mention it before I forgot. Back to the topic...
Generally speaking, it seems our history is about the struggle to integrate
the values of freedom into the culture, and Civil Disobedience has been one
of the major weapons in that battle. Oh sure, we hold these truths to be
self-evident and we try to honor these rights as our highest principles, but
its been a long hard road toward realizing those values. I think its because
they are social values and so it takes time for a culture to absorb new
values than it does for an individual. Its an historical process rather that
an educational one, you know?
Emerson and Thoreau and the other Transcendentalists were most than just an
inspiration for the abolishonists, they were virtually the god fathers of
the anti-slavery movement. The lable "Transcendentalist" is a reference to
Kant's transcendental categories, but I think it refers to a certain kind of
mysticism as well. I beleieve they were among the first major American
thinkers to be aware of Buddhism and other Eastern thoughts. Emerson's
"Nature is mind precipitated." is easily mistaken for idealism, but he
wasn't talking epistemology and doesn't mean "mind" as personal
subjectivity. He's saying reaility is made of awareness. Precipitated is a
good word. One can imagine rain drops or snow flakes forming out of water
molecules. Its sort of an image of static patterns forming out of DQ, eh? I
think they'd love Lila if they could be here to read it.
I think Mr. Budd was quite right to read Thoreau's "higher and independent
power" as something Pirsig would put on the intellectual level, even if
Thoreau would not have had these terms and concepts in his day. In fact the
quotes from Rick show that Thoreau subscribed to the social contract theory,
which assumes society is a construct of humanity. Pirsig's idea that social
values preceed the intellect and that all our ideas are suspended in the
culture and in the language - all this and more contradicts the social
contract theory. But Thoreau is essentially correct anyway, those
inalienable rights are not granted by government, government is supposed to
secure these natural rights. And the idea that the individual, in an attempt
to do what is right, can disobey the civil authorities and can know better
than them is very much in the spirit of Pirsig's hierarchy of sQ.
There is never enough genuine freedom. We'll always need more. Interesting
that Thoreau suggests that even democracy is limited in this respect. Who
doesn't love freedom?
And finally a thought about thoughts... If each level of static quality is
more free and more dynamic that the previous ones, then freedom is the aim
in cultivating the intellect. A person with a highly developed and an open,
creative mind is the free-est kind of person, no? To free your mind requires
discipline and order, yes? I don't mean the kind of freedom that comes from
the mystical experience, that's DQ and I'm talking about the world of static
patterns.
Which raises a question, I think. Do the Indians have an intellectual level
that's anything like the European's? The individuality exhibited by the
Indians seems to show that they're more than purely social creatures, but
where od they get it? If their intellectual level is less developed than the
metal civilizations, then how'd they get to be so free? I think that their
mystical tradition explains it, but would be interested to hear otherwise.
DMB
P.S. Congratulate me, I'm a dad! Max James was born on 4/11/00. He's got all
the right parts and everything.
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