[MD] Dreaming and death

[Squonkonguitar at aol.com]

Mark said:
...many Americans avoid talk about death.

dmb says:
Hmmm. I don't know if we can generalize about American  attitudes without 
mentioning religion. Since the vast majority are  Christian, most people 
think they're going to heaven when they die. I  suppose that belief tends to 
take the existential edge off of things and  acts as an elaborate form of 
denial. And it seems that the emphasis on youth  and beauty is as much about 
denying death as it is about sex.
 
Mark: Thanks Dave. Maybe it's because i have no theistic beliefs, but i  
would have thought that believing in life ever after would make talking about  
death more easy? 'One day we will meet again and be happy in the arms of Jesus'  
or something like that? I suddenly find myself fascinated by this: Why, if  
Christians really believe they are going to live forever in heaven do they avoid 
 talking about people they have just lost like the plague?

dmb  says:
Thanks for bringing Orpheus into the discussion, you flatterer you. As  I 
understand it, fate originally refered to that which was spoken by the  gods. 
I think the idea is that one's end is happy or tragic depending on  whether 
or not you took heed of what they said. Defying the gods would lead  to a 
very unhappy place. And I think this the culture's immune system. These  gods 
are the mirrors that Pirsig describes in the section with the giant  cartoon 
octopus dream and all that.
 
Mark: I see. Achilles once said that the Gods are jealous of men because  men 
are mortal - we never know when our end will come and that is thrilling -  
something the Gods cannot experience for all their powers. Now, being  mortal 
can't be helped, i mean, it's not our fault we peg it is it? Given a  choice we 
may rather not? So, when the Gods promise immortality to a man, are  they 
actually punishing him?
My understanding of tragedy is that the difference between tragedy and  
comedy is that tragedy is unavoidable no matter what you do. Comedy is  surprising, 
it's unexpected. It's music. It's fluid and Dynamic. Now, this  begins to 
look like a sq/DQ split: Tragedy is unavoidable and sq, Comedy is a  brilliant 
illumination and Dynamic. Bill Hicks comes on stage and you're not  sure what 
he's going to say. Larry 'the laugh' Vaudeville comes on and you've  heard it 
before; he's going to 'die' on stage. Tragic. But we saw it  coming.
Going back to Achilles, not knowing when one will die is Dynamic. But  
immortality is now, sq! The Gods are boring, they are static forever, only men  die, 
and that's Dynamic.
OK. Defying the Gods may be seen as thinking you know best - follow your sq  
patterning and walk straight into trouble, just as your father did and his  
father before him; this must have been noticed by early people: they discovered  
genetic dispositions before we called them so. That's what tragedy is/was:  
genetic disposition. When a son looks sod all like his father, it's funny. If 
he  looks identical, its tragic. And the same goes for behaviour. Bill Hicks 
didn't  behave like his father.
 
dmb:
This is why heretics have been burned at the 
stake, why contrarians are  so often hated and demonized, and its also why 
criminals are locked behind  bars. Some people defy the gods in a heroic 
effort to refresh the world and  some people defy the gods because they're 
sociopathic assholes. You know,  and sometimes we have a hard time telling 
the difference. So yea, I think  you're reading it right. Orpheus was defying 
the gods, trying to transform  and refresh the static patterns, and was torn 
apart for it. And like Bill  Hicks, his career really took off after he was 
dead. He was re-memberd after  he was dismembered.
 
Mark: Thanks. I'm trying to read it, but i don't have as good a handle in  it 
as you. Something isn't right and i'm searching to put my finger on it.
Maybe it's my lack of understanding?
Let's go back to basics and see what happens?
Myths. Gods.
What are they?
They are socially learned sq patterns evolving our culture in response to  DQ.
Happy with that?
Orpheus. Who he? Answer: a metaphor. A social metaphor for DQ.
Orpheus never existed. He's a character in a story. A story intended to  
promote a metaphor for DQ, as all stories were before Intellectual Quality  
emerged.
But, as i said in my previous mail, and which you have left out of this  
response, which is a shame as i value your thoughts, some metaphors are better  
than others. They HAVE to be if we accept the MoQ. Orpheus may have been the  
best metaphor at the social level before the best intellectual metaphor at the  
intellectual level emerged. And they all point toward DQ.
(There is even more than one version of the Orhpeus myth, which shows us it  
can be improved: if the Orpheus myth is the best social metaphor, then there  
must be a best version of the best myth?)
The Orhpeus lesson may be this: If you're too Dynamic people resent and  hate 
you for it, they don't understand and find it hard to deal with you, even  if 
they like you. This metaphor tells it like it is - it's the way Humans are.  
It's sociology. The art of sociology is an analysis of sq/DQ patterns.
What parallels are there between Bill Hicks and Orpheus? Orpheus is a well  
honed and crafted metaphor, what some call an archetype. BH was one who fell  
right into that well observed pattern, so does this make BH tragic? Yes, it 
does  in my view, tragic in the real sense of the word, not as a put-down. But he 
was  Dynamic and funny while he lasted. Too Dynamic. Too funny. And that lead 
to  tragedy. It's like walking a knife edge.
(In saying this i'm taking what others have said about BH into account,  
because i've hardly seen or read any of his material)
 
dmb had to Gav:
...you're right to wonder if vanity plays a role in our  attitudes about 
death.

Mark replied:
If this is a valuable  analysis, then it would seem, if my observation about 
American's avoiding  talk of death has some merit, that the US is a 
particularly vain culture.  Self-obsessed, that is say, to be obsessed with 
the self. It kinda adds up  dontcha think? ...

dmb says:
Particularly vain culture? I don't know.  It seems to me that American 
culture is particularly shallow and  superficial. You know, the vendors of 
style, the unrealness of people who  aren't on TV and the whole Hollywood 
thing. There is an obsession with fame  and youthful beauty, but it seems to 
be based in the wish to conform and in  a kind of desperate insecurity rather 
than excessive pride.

Glad you  made it back from Germany.
 
Mark: It was a close thing.

Thanks dmb,
Mark