What is my favorite passage in Lila and why?
That's a tough one. One of the scenes that really touched me was the
flashback with Lila and the streetcar. When Robert Pirsig, the "sad sack",
looks back and sees Lila and her friend laughing about his appearance. She
puts on an artificial expression, but RP sees beneath this to the deeper, sad
truth: Lila is a judge, as we all are, in her case a biological judge, and RP
knows there's nothing he will ever be able to do to make her low judgment of
him change. It was a very sad and profound passage in the book. Let me tell
you what it made me think about...
We are all guilty of judging others in this fashion; its like an automatic
process that has developed within us. I think the judge that is doing the
most damaged to our souls, presently, is the social judge. It control us more
than most of us would like to admit. In more ways than we would like to
imagine.
We choose not to see it.
I think it's one of the great tragedies of our time that we care more about
our own cash piles than the lives of other human beings. We're all guilty,
it's a bare fact that is sitting out in the open for everyone to see, but we
choose to ignore it. It's like an evil that we've all agreed to tolerate. Am
I wrong? And as long as society at large doesn't deem something evil, then we
as individual humans don't deem it evil, either.
After all, those unfortunate fools who start ranting about evils that society
at large says don't exist....we call those people crazy, don't we? Robert
Pirsig knows about this first hand.
It's only OK to call something evil if society says it's evil first.
Then why does my intellect scream to me that more people care about money
than about humanity and that this *is* evil? None of you here can say you are
not guilty of this evil. If you do, you are a liar. We spend more time using
our intellect to make money than to help improve humanity (and don't give me
the tired typical response: money improves humanity!) or alleviate suffering
or save lives.
This is a problem. A major problem; i doubt we will truly be able to see the
damage it has done to our soul for many, many decades, perhaps centuries. We
currently choose not to see. We don't even want to waste time talking about
it, do we?
"The sky is blue and the world revolves around money. Now shut up and accept
it." That seems to be the attitude, doesn't it? Hell, even "Star Trek"
predicts that we will one day no longer use money, but so far no one wants to
step up and plant the seeds of one day getting rid of it. And nobody can give
me a good reason why not. Nobody over in MD, where I've been ranting recently.
The truth is, nobody *really* wants to fight the system, do they? Fear.
Oh, we've got people who will fight to their dying breath about things
society says is OK to fight for (petty stuff such as race, politics,
religion, abortion), but they don't want to see the deeper problem beneath
all of those other petty issues. Our lack of caring for humanity. That's the
problem, but nobody sees how huge it is. We are blinded it seems, by
ridiculous platitudes such as "the world is better off than it has ever been
before" and "Well, there will always be suffering, just accept that."
The attitude is, you can start caring about other people only after you have
the *money* to care about them. We are a country that only cares when it is
convenient for us to care. The truth is, a cancerous strain of complacency
has infected the very soul of humanity. We in America who have the capability
to do the most good, choose to keep ourselves entertained instead. History
will look back on us with revulsion. Soulless people who made idols of movie
stars and billionaires. People who utterly ignored the sin of complacency,
because acknowledging it as a sin would reveal too many of us guilty, and
we'd rather not be bothered with guilt.
We are judges, as Lila is a judge. If something is socially acceptable,
chances are we will judge it well. When is humanity going to see this faulty
judging process? When is humanity going to transcend the lust for money,
entertainment, and social acceptance above all else? When is humanity going
to care for humanity for humanity's sake? I don't know....and nobody else
seems to care.
Jon
P.S. I don't want any of the above ideas to be viewed as political; making
laws should not even be considered as an option for change. Change must come
from within. The first step is admitting our guilt.
------- End of forwarded message -------
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