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[MODERATOR'S NOTE: I'm having difficulty seeing the relevance of the arguments
in this thread to this month's topic of the self / free will / the reality of
static patterns. Please make the connection to the topic clearer in any future
posts. Thanks.]
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Hi Marcus Gardner,
There is some delay in getting mail so i am responding to you now, and
i thank you for your response.
you wrote:
>You argument drove me away quite badly, not neccesarily for how critical
>it was of many, many people, or for the number of cliches used to represent
>those people's thoughts, but rather for how wholly empty it is of proof.
yes sir, i admit that it is wholly empty of proof, simply because we are not
in a scientific domain where every statement has to be proven to be true and
consistent under all conditions and for everyone who wants to have it
proven.
It is for your free will to judge the truth or falsehood of my assertions.
>Yes, you have a lot of theoretical thought here, "If we make a wrong
>choice then our ability to discern between that right and wrong which
>allows
>us to make right choices is detrimented," "Nature does not evidence us with
>the rightness of our choice," and so on. What I would like to know is the
>following: Where do you get these ideas from? Surely you are a reader of
>Pirsig, otherwise you would not be on this forum (yet I am new here so I
>don't know). As somewhat of a "disciple" in Pirsig's exemplified style I
>have to cite you on all of this hypothetical "truths." Not once have you
>shown that what you are saying here is anything more than heresay, someone
>else's ideas which you have not run through the test of practicality
I belive this forum does accept ideas other than that of Pirsig's, and thats
why i have taken the liberty to present some of my own ideas here. Lets say
that it is an expression of my free will.( Again i am not presenting any
proof for this statement, it is up to your free will to accept or reject )
If i say, as you have somewhat rephrased it, " Nature does not evidence
us with the rightness of our choice " naturally i myself cannot decisively
test the practicality of this statement. I can only state that this is what
i believe as a generalisation resultant of a certain experience.I am not
imposing this on anyone as a hypothetical truth. Also i am not insisting
that this is an absolute truth. At times, the reverse also is true, ie,
Nature does evidence us with the rightness of our choice, but again this
evidence cannot be put to empirical or scientific testing - and that is
the whole point of what i am saying. So let me put it this way :
"Nature does not evidence us with physically testable proofs of the
rightness or wrongness of our choices."
Now many will refute this by saying " The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs
are evidence and proof of the Rightness of US action, as it led to a quick
end to the war."(fairly close to the official version)
>Your first presumption in censuring the mystics, the
>'holier-than-thous,' the DQ/SQ believers, and many others is that they
>actually care about being right or wrong. In going into these forms of
>meditation and studying Quality they are generally acknowledging that they
>believe "right and wrong" to simply be a subconscious Quality evaluation
>that varies from person to person.
I'm NOT censuring people who actually CARE about being right or wrong, and
whatever MEANS they do employ (in order to consciously CARE about a Quality
evaluation and action of right and wrong), is NOT any of my business. My
point is that the method does not itself constitute results, rather i'm
pointing to the danger that most people eventually only indulge in the
means and actually end up not caring for anything at all. If you are not
one of those, no need for you to feel censured or upset about it.
>The right and wrong you seem to be
>talking about is the "2+2=5" right and wrong of the scientific world.
I fail to see how you have come to that conclusion. Maybe we are using
a different language. The scientific world has never bothered about
Right or Wrong, only about facts.
>Believers in the MOQ and Eastern religions don't take up their claims to
>avoid responcibility for their grades in school or mistakes on the job!
I wonder how you can be so sure that "Believers in the MOQ and eastern
religions" don't avoid responsibility. Even countries like Japan have
not expressed a regret for their war crimes.
>These beliefs are taken up because they offer the believer the highest
>quality of experience, they offer them what they believe to be the correct
>perception of reality, one that eases the problems of life and clarifies
>many social, biological and moral dillemas.
These are the exact words (or similar) even a junkie can use to claim
their right for growing, consuming and trading narcotics. The point is
that merely claiming "highest quality of experience" means nothing unless
it also has a positive (moral) social impact. Everyone claims their
version to be the correct perception of reality.
>Now I also censured someone in this piece. You, for not exemplifying
>your ideas. Let me protect myself from the same criticism. A part of your
>essay critisizes those who are afraid to "take a stand." Well I must say,
>this flys in the face of my beliefs rather strongly, yet I do not claim
>that
>I am "right" or "wrong," merely that the following belief has the highest
>quality for me, and likely many others. To take a stand is to enforce your
>value-decoder on someone else. My way of deciphering the Quality of my
>world is likely independent of anyone else, considering the number of
>values
>I must discern in looking at my own foot. To attempt to force my way of
>looking at feet, or blaming, or freeing from blame, potential victims of
>capital punishment, is of low Quality to me and many others.
Please feel free to censure me. I'm quite willing to exemplifying my ideas
in real life or historical situations, but that seems to be sort of taboo
here. Hypothetical situations always lead to a dead end. I can't figure
out whats the problem with your foot and frankly it doesn't concern me.
I'm not forcing anything upon you, but as you are expressing your views
on the Quality of your world, so am i. If you dont like my views, you
are free to disregard them or even condemm them. You make it sound
like i have committed some kind of a crime against your religion.
Rather than to seek a clarification, you seem to be putting words in my
mouth ( interpreting what i wrote as you imagine)
To take a stand for me means to take a clear perspective, rather than an
evasive, on critical moral issues and responsibility. So let me clarify
the stand of my last post which is that : I am clearly attacking "amoral
and evasive attitudes" of people who will use any means as a cover to
defend their status-quo and actually immoral attitudes. Another hypothetical
truth i am stating here is that amoral beliefs and attitudes are the
first lines of defence and the forte of immorality. Immorality hides
behind (conciously or sub-consciously) amoral attitudes. Once that mask
falls, immorality is easier to expose. This is my stand or as you put it,
this for me is a high Quality belief. If you say that by this i am
forcing my Quality upon you, then is that a high Quality belief for you?
>If I were to
>say that Timothy McVeigh's brother deserves to die because of "guilt by
>association" (I do not even know if he has a brother) and was so ambitious
>as to say that I would press in this belief until everyone saw I was in
>"the
>right" than I would be forcing my Quality views on others. Would Brother
>McVeigh be guilty? In my eyes, yes. In everyone else's eyes, who knows.
>The point is this: right and wrong in non-scientific fields cannot be
>defined, even if Brother McVeigh killed every innocent child and woman on
>this earth, due to the fact that there is no given quantitative way of
>assigning merit to moral situations.
I dont know about you, but if person A says that Timothy McVeigh's brother
deserves to die only because of "guilt by association" and no evidence of
crime committed as such, i will oppose that person A by whatever means
feasible, and if person B opposes me by saying that i am 'forcing my
Quality'
views on others, then i will claim that that is the real "force of Quality",
and we have a battle of morals on our hands, whereby person B will be in my
view representing an amoral defense for person A, who in my stand (or
highest
quality belief for me) is immoral.Person B's stand in this case would be to
defend person A as a person of higher force of Quality against my claim
to the same. Who would be Right ? Time would tell. Time always tells.
Sooner or later. Time will tell.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:31 BST