[MD] Back to the last static latch

[Heather Perella]

Platt, Khaled, Arlo, Craig, and others,

     Please bear with me, this is a long posting.

     I can't tell were you are in this discussion
Platt.  Should we kill the illegals?  Should we kill
the rioters in France?  They are in the country, not
far away in another country for some future threat
(Iraq), they are actually here being defiant to the
intellectual laws trying to organize social order. 
They are merely running across the border, not even
organized into an intellectual demand, their demand is
social (economical).  Yet, they by-pass the
intellectual level (laws), apparently, unless, some
intelletual spokesmen is out there that I am unaware
of.  
     Are they not in the jungle, hooting and hollering
like a bunch of backward jungle people?  Where is
their civility, their honor, their sense of law and
order?  Where is their civility that honors the rules
of a good Englishmen, I mean, U.S. citizen?  Notice
much of these backward jungle inserted comments are
what the British had to say about the woodsmen rebels
in a place far across the Atlantic.  Notice this is
what the U.S. citizens (those woodsmen rebels far
across the Atlantic) had to say about the Amerindians.
 
     Would it not be more prudent to focus not on the
different societies, due to the fact we all might be
in flux trying to climb the same hill (example Japan,
who loved beauty (quality) and had a sense of creating
something or doing something in a way that made it
beautiful, yet, they were looked down upon by the U.S.
because they didn't open their ports)?  Could we come
to some kind of intellectual understanding?  Yet,
would this intellectual understanding bring us action?
 What kind of action would it be?  In the face of all
that is going on could we track the values at play and
fulfill the 'wisdom is knowledge put into action' type
of phrasing that I have been talking about (might I
add moral action).  
     The mexicans value the opportunity of economics
and some become defiant criminals in this country
(yet, criminals are not new to this country so with
any flow of population it seems you'll have your good
and you'll have your bad).  What are the U.S. citizens
valuing?  The law and the organization that comes from
allowing others to be in line to enter this country. 
Some U.S. citizens value the mexican trying to get $
where $ is not readily available.  So are these the
only values we have in conflict with each other.  Here
is the list that I have as follows:

     $ - a factor on the U.S. (social security, taxes,
etc...) and Mexican 
          (lack of $); this is mainly a social level
construct, except for the 
          pervasiveness of law.  Any discussion on
this becomes 
          intellectual in definition of $ influence or
characterization of $ 
          on the rest of society, but here I am also
taking into account the 
          role $ has on the social level where class,
wealth, etc... are 
          expressed.
     
     criminals - both countries have criminals, and
thus, the amount of 
                      criminals on one side or the
other does not necessarily 
                      have to be pertinent here. 
Again, any discussion here 
                      becomes intellectual when law is
factored in due to its' 
                      pervasiveness as an intellectual
level value.

     law - if you have such a law, but is not
enforced, do you really have 
              a law, therefore here is one possible
intellectual value that is 
              missing?

     organization... - here is where a while load of
things come into play
               1   - ...is a support beam to the law
               2a - ...is language
               2b - ...is the coherency for any
society/culture to be 
                    differentiated from any other
society/culture; who culture 
                    is organized in this frame and
fashion and another in this 
                    frame and fashion so we call this
culture Q and this 
                    culture R and this culture E,
etc...  Thus, culture leads into 
                    a whole other intellectual value,
namely static quality due 
                    to nature of naming/identifying
this group in contrast to 
                    this group of people over here,
etc...

     If, any other values, need to be factored into
this list of what particular static qualities are at
stake please feel free to add them to the list.  As to
DQ, which seems to be highly valued, maybe more than
necessary.  The value I place in DQ is when SQ is not
corresponding with balance on all of its' levels.  DQ
is the input of the world onto any level that is
missing something that is not present, but needs to be
present in order for that level to be in sync, in
balance, with all of the other levels.  This balance
by each level, keeps the levels intact and in harmony
with each other, so the level of chaos is not allowed
to rein and take over.  With the head decapitated we
have the habits.  With habits gone, we have instinct. 
With instinct gone, we have skin and bones basically
dirt.  Without skin, bones, and dirt, we have chaos
reining and the earth is gone, the sun is gone, we
just have things going and coming with no apparent
order of what is or what will be.
     For example, the intellectual laws that are to
protect the biological level of the environment are in
place to organize the society into action, which the
latter with more intellect is supposed to be able to
balance its' biological-social level interchange.  The
wisdom/intellect in this culture is derived from its'
laws, since people don't act on their own we depend on
others to think for us, enact a law, and then the
society is to carry out the law by force if necessary.
 Now if we could think on our own more often we would
not need so many laws and rules, but since people
don't then we have politicians and judges thinking for
us, legislating and putting in the courts more and
more ideas as to how society should be thinking, but
is not.
     The intellectual level is recognized in a
hand-full of people compared to the population at
large, because something in this culture constrains
and hand-ties our individual intellects.  Why not the
mob?  Because the mob doesn't think at times.  Why
not?  How many years does it take to be capable to
critically think about society, handle intellectually
the kind of thinking this culture has, and thus, be
able to understand the structure of this culture? 
Even after 12 years of schooling, many people just
don't get it.  Why?  Because this culture is set-up in
a way that restricts the mind/intellect from being
used on an individual basis.  Where is that
restriction located?  Well, from day one, nursery
school, then K-12 we are taught to think society knows
best and conformity to what society teaches you is
what is best for you.  How many parents believe this,
and thus, what the child or student thinks is not
considered valuable and another being that is capable
of freely thinking - dies to conformity.  
     (I am relying on memory since my books are in
boxes ready for the move that will happen next week)
This reminds me of a student (a male) to Lame Deer (or
maybe it was Lame Deer), but anyways during the 1950's
or 1970's (which makes me think it was his student)
reservation cops showed up at the door to take him to
school.  His father didn't want his mind taken away
from him.  He was to learn the old ways (which often
in any culture, I would include this culture, too,
means to learn how to think more for oneself, yet,
still have cultural contexts, but the intellectual
self is not wiped out, just kept in true balance
[balance between all Pirsig's levels I add]).  So his
father came outside with a shot gun blasting over the
heads of the cops letting them know they couldn't take
his son away.  He did learn the old ways, and I am
more confident that it was the student of Lame Deer,
not Lame Deer due to rest of the story.  He received
permission (via a certificate - the U.S. still had to
sanctify it) from the U.S. gov't to practice the old
ways.  His name is Leonard Crow Dog.  He revived the
Ghost Dance, first practice of, since the massacre
days of Wounded Knee and such.  He eventually was put
in jail due to his out-spoken claims of soverinty
(spelling?), and use of guns that became another
Wounded Knee. I believe it was in the year 1979.
     School from the very beginning is one way that
this culture indoctrinates the masses to believe
conformity is best.  Plato had a school for those that
knew Geometry, nobody else could enter (from what I
remember).  They had to conform to what Plato's school
said was knowledge.  Then and only then were they
considered learned and educated enough to learn and
understand what this school thought.  All others where
the unlearned and uneducated.  Remember during these
times their were the Greeks and then there was
everybody else (the barbarians).  The Chinese and
everybody else (barbarians).  The uneducated rest of
the world.  
     How much free-thinking is in school now-a-days? 
How much preservation is given to the individuals own
intellectual self?  The free-thinker?  Oh, how
dangerous this latter person (free-thinker) has become
in this culture...  oh, how dangerous, he/she has
really become.
     My favorite classes in school were those that
encouraged 'write whatever you want' type of classes. 
Why?  Because it was the freedom that I sought, that
other classes dismissed.  Today it is more Teacher to
Student learning, not Teacher encouraging Student to
shed some light on the matter (dharmakaya light might
I add).  A true Zen master understands the dynamic in
the world that lives and breaths and allows his/her
static description to be open to this dynamism.  Dogen
didn't even want his teachings written, even though
they were, because he understood that if others
depended on him, they lose themselves, and
enlightenment would not be.  
     Dogen may have understood history, because the
history of Zen and its' beginnings is due to this
understanding.  China depended on written documents
very highly.  It was a written word culture, that if
it is written it must be true.  China sought documents
on Buddha and savored every morsel that found its' way
from India.  For centuries this went on, but it always
seemed that something was missing.  So they sought for
more and more documents and translated, and
re-translated Buddha's teachings over and over again. 
Yet, every time they thought they found the missing
piece to the puzzle of Buddha's teachings, they were
disappointed and so various schools opened with
differing emphasis and understandings in China.  Then
somebody came along (again I can't remember his name,
maybe it was Boddiharma) who said Buddha is here and
now.  The way to realize this is via meditation, and
Chan began (Chan is Chinese for Zen).  What to do
while meditating?  Well, the two schools of Rinzai and
Soto each have a different emphasis on what to do
while meditating.  Do they each promise enlightenment?
 Yes, is one better than the other?  No.  I guess it
may all depend on what you want to do while you
meditate.

Thanks for your patience for whomever read this whole
posting,
SA         

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com