[MD] Transhumanism

[Mary]

Hi Matt, Andre by reference, and All,

[Mary before]
.  A major part of his work deals
> with different aspects of humility: transcending the
> absolutist nature of an ego-fueled SOM perspective, or
> transcending self to see that we are but part of a larger
> whole, or seeing that all is Morality, or that truth has a
> small "t".  ... To be humble is to
> be just a little closer to what he is talking about.  

[Matt responded]
> _Personal_ humility is a wonderful trait to have, and
> thankfully my two greatest heroes, Pirsig and Rorty, had it
> in spades as it turns out.  But it might have turned out
> otherwise, ...

Humility is the central concept of the MoQ. SOM is completely ego driven and
is what Pirsig sees as the 'enemy' throughout. I might as well come out and
just say it because to keep writing posts alluding to it is not getting us
anywhere.  I keep trying to engage with this idea, but, completely
understandably am finding few takers.  To admit that your very own ego is
the primary destroyer of harmony in your life takes courage.  It is this
same ego that has culminated in SOM.  Every last bit of it.  It is that
which we must have the courage to face if we hope to transcend to anything
better.  It is not socially acceptable to talk about ego and Pirsig does not
do it directly either.  As a writer he would have been pilloried.  IT IS THE
LAST TABOO.  Every culture has an 'immune system' to prevent it.  It is
pervasive.  EVERYWHERE.  Andre rails against the SOM as Intellectual Level
because he thinks there is some other way of viewing the world.  An
alternative.  Sure.  There are lots of alternatives, and indeed, most of
them are Eastern; but I ask you this:  What are they attempting to transcend
in the first place?  If there were no need to transcend anything in their
cultures, then no one would have bothered to develop those lovely
philosophies.  What is the source of pain, harm, anguish in the world?  What
has it always been for humanity?  

"Personal" humility is BS.  Anyone can learn to spout it automatically
without truly believing a word of it.  At times, it is actually the expected
thing to do, but I believe Pirsig sees the bigger picture.  He really DOES
think his ideas should be a starting point rather than an end.  So did
Buddha.

To use "humility" as a
> core term in one's philosophy Rorty's entirely against, and
> I have ambiguous feelings about how much Pirsig would be
> satisfied with it.  I also see nothing necessarily humble
> about the four philosophical theses you listed.

These ambiguous feelings are detrimental to your personal growth.  That is
your choice.  For myself I choose to fight my own ego.  There is NO OTHER
THING TO DO and I am not ashamed to admit it.  Are you?  

I truly apologize for hitting you over the head with this, but as I see it,
this is the crux of the difference between your interpretation and DMBs,
some others, and mine.  

If you try to carry the MoQ forward without understanding humility, you will
end up with this illogical mish-mash of "Intellectual Level as thinking
itself" stuff.  That says nothing.  It informs no one.  It teaches nothing.
It's a cop out.

Believe it or not, truly Best,
Mary

- The most important thing you will ever make is a realization.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org [mailto:moq_discuss-
> bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Matt Kundert
> Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2010 9:26 PM
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Transhumanism
> 
> 
> Hi Mary,
> 
> Mary said:
> Pirsig speaks often with personal humility, as when he said
> something on the DVD to the effect that he wanted his
> comments about art treated as a starting point and not an
> ending point of discussion.  A major part of his work deals
> with different aspects of humility: transcending the
> absolutist nature of an ego-fueled SOM perspective, or
> transcending self to see that we are but part of a larger
> whole, or seeing that all is Morality, or that truth has a
> small "t".  These are important themes.  To be humble is to
> be just a little closer to what he is talking about.  Taken in
> that spirit, it seems perfectly natural for all of us to speak
> with an "it's just my opinion" voice about most things.  It
> also lends an implicit air of respect for divergent views.  I
> like it.
> 
> Matt:
> In my honest opinion, surveying the course of my time at
> the MD (10 years) and linking my personal experience here
> in conversation and in other avenues to a general
> understanding of the course 2500 years on philosophical
> conversation, I've come to think that the "implicit air of
> respect for divergent views" is _not_ best generated by
> the rhetorical affect under discussion.
> 
> I think you are absolutely right, Mary, to link that affect to
> a kind of "theoretical humility": I, too, take this to be the
> opposite tenor of the course of 2500 years.  I link "humility"
> to the ascetic mood that Nietzsche denounced in favor of
> the "self-assertive" mood created by Bacon, and theorized
> best by Nietzsche's hero, Emerson.
> 
> _Personal_ humility is a wonderful trait to have, and
> thankfully my two greatest heroes, Pirsig and Rorty, had it
> in spades as it turns out.  But it might have turned out
> otherwise, and while I might have admired them less as
> people, it doesn't stop me from admiring, for example,
> Socrates, Nietzsche, or Heidegger.  To use "humility" as a
> core term in one's philosophy Rorty's entirely against, and
> I have ambiguous feelings about how much Pirsig would be
> satisfied with it.  I also see nothing necessarily humble
> about the four philosophical theses you listed.
> 
> What is in the background of Arlo's dissatisfaction (and I
> haven't read his responses to others in this thread closely
> enough to know whether he's made this explicit himself,
> but my bet is this sentiment is lurking) is that Pirsig--by
> thinking his comments _would_ be treated by us as the
> end of conversation rather than the beginning--ends up
> treating us like children rather than as peers.  He actually
> (and accidentally, against his intentions) _withholds_
> respect towards us.  And I think this has had a trickle
> down effect, turning into a kind of Lord of the Flies
> situation.  Why would we stop inquiring into the Good and
> Better just because our favorite spouter of wisdom
> opened his mouth?  Only if we treated him as a
> father-figure, or a guru, would something like that happen.
> Just as a child is someone that hasn't developed
> ego-boundaries, to think he would end conversation about
> philosophy implies that we don't know where we end and
> he begins, that we don't at least implicitly know the
> difference between what I differentiate as philosophy and
> biography.  As if we don't know the difference between
> "what do you think about X?" and "when you said 'Y,'
> what did you mean?"
> 
> An implicit air of respect is not generated by adding "IMHO"
> to a message.  "Hey, you are a dick (in my honest opinion)."
> That didn't work out at all, did it?  What creates an air of
> respect is one's entire manner of being in their writing.  It
> is conveyed at times with certain rhetorical flourishes, but
> it cannot be reduced and pin-pointed to this or that
> isolated sentence or phrase, just as the genius of a vision
> or the personality of a person cannot be so reduced to a
> series of individuated parts.  It is the parts all together that
> produce that odd, whole thing called a personality.  It's like
> asking, "why do you love me?"  Any list will be deficient,
> and the great poetic lists are intentionally synecdoches for
> a thing that will always evade skillful individuation.  That
> doesn't mean we should stop individuating, just as it
> doesn't mean that "IMO" can't convey something good.
> 
> An example of how a philosopher might comport themselves
> to have both personal humility and to treat others as peers
> who are not to be treated with kid gloves, there's Dick
> Rorty.  All accounts of him personally are that he was one
> of the most self-effacing people they'd ever met.  And in
> writing, when people in the mid-80s began describing him
> as a "strong poet" (his own highest term of approbation
> for the genius), he demurred and called himself a "weak
> thinker," a term that came from a group of Italian
> philosophers who practiced intellectual briocolage.
> Following John Locke, who thought of himself as a
> handmainden to Newton's scientific discoveries, Rorty liked
> to say he was an underlaborer, clearing away the brush
> from under the new part of the forest others had found.
> And when the Philosophy Department in Munster, Germany
> invited him to participate in an experiment--to be part of a
> symposium on his work, except rather than the usual
> invitations to other professional, established philosophers,
> the papers and discussants would be culled largely from
> the undergraduate population--he agreed, and the results
> are published in book form.  I have never heard of this
> kind of experiment--undergrad journals exist, but who
> wants to read them?--but there he is, writing patient
> replies that treated the essays as serious criticisms, no
> matter their level of quality in the large view.  E. D. Hirsch,
> who I just happened to mention to Arlo, taught at the
> University of Virginia for a number of years with Rorty.  He
> said they co-taught a handful of seminars over the years,
> and he figured out why students adored him.  As he put it,
> it was because he had a much higher tolerance for
> nonsense.  The way I see this personal style of
> comportment in the classroom as of a piece with Rorty's
> explicit philosophy (recall Pirsig's comments about
> Chairman Richard McKeon in ZMM) is that genius vision
> often sounds like nonsense initially.  And with students,
> you're supposed to be encouraging them to develop
> themselves.  So you treat their nonsense with respect,
> as a valid entry into the "conversation of humankind," as
> Rorty liked to call it, by leveling the best criticism of it
> you can think of in a way that encourages the
> nonsense-spouter to, not abandon the idea, but to grow
> the idea.
> 
> That's what Pirsig could have done.  I absolutely respect
> and understand his desire not to get involved in the MD.
> It would be weird for a number of reasons.  But treat us
> like adults, and don't pretend you're doing us favor.  If you
> read in the shadows, and something occurs to you that
> you could clear up (or you changed your mind), write a
> little something for the Essay Forum--we do, after all,
> have a whole section set up for that kind of thing (i.e. for
> him).  I think Pirsig's generally made a wise choice in not
> engaging with us on a daily level.  I respect his desire for
> privacy, and that desire itself makes sense with the tenor
> of his philosophy.  But that doesn't go along with thinking
> he's going to end the conversation.
> 
> And I say these things as someone who owes Pirsig a
> great debt of gratitude for his role in my process of
> self-creation, one I will never forget, and also as
> someone who owes Pirsig a debt of gratitude for a
> personal kindness he was able to afford me.  Pirsig is a
> wonderful human being, and was somehow able to get it
> on paper _and_ wrap it into a theory of the world.  But
> it is exactly because of those things that I treat his
> ideas with the proper dignity they deserve and spend
> time thinking about them and trying to get them to fit
> and work and criticizing them when I don't think they do.
> His are not just opinions, they are opinions I respect.
> And the more one treats another's opinions with respect
> and the dignity of being confronted by good, intelligent
> opposing opinions, the more one generates an implicit air
> of respect for divergent views.
> 
> IMHO,
> 
> Matt
> 
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