[MD] Case's Answer to Marsha

[david buchanan]

Case's Answer to Marsha was interesting and amusing. A few comments, just 
for the fun of it.

First of all, God's answer to Job was just plain rude. God's answer was 
cruel and arrogant. Its the kind of answer one expects from an egomaniac 
like Donald Rumsfeld. And, having just read Freud's "The Future of an 
Illusion" for school, I would object to the whole premise. As he has it, 
religion is the cultural equivalent of the infantile wish for a parent 
figure who will protect us and tell us what to do, a figure we both fear and 
need. And, he says, the whole complex is a reation to the hostile forces of 
nature. You know, we're all God's children and all that. God was invented to 
protect us from these uncontrolable forces. Or so says Freud, anyway. Its an 
interesting idea as far as it goes, but I'm not offering Freud as a reply so 
much as pointing out how the story of job sort of exemplifies what Freud was 
talking about. The central question in Job's case, as you point out, is that 
really bad shit happens to people and people always want a reason for it. It 
is concieved as some kind of injustice. But the fact that bad things happen 
to virtuous people only seems odd when we suppose there is a reason they 
should be immune to calamity, disease and disaster. It only seems 
objectionable when you suppose that some kind of cosmic justice exists in 
the first place. The problem of evil is only a problem insofar as we can 
imagine its absence as the way things are supposed to be.

There was a huge earthquake in Lisbon, on a Sunday, during Voltaire's 
lifetime. It was big news all over Christian Europe because of the way it 
defied this sense of cosmic justice. Lisbon was a very religious town, full 
of churches and the churches were full on that fateful Sunday. Lots of 
church-goers were crushed that day and, like Job, everybody wanted to know 
how such terrible thing could happen to God's devoted children. It must have 
been like a real life Stephen King novel to them. Voltaire had a lot of fun 
beating up the church with that.

The idea in Chinese divination techniques, that the general flow of reality 
will manifest itself on every level, is the same notion behind Jung's 
syncronicity. As I understand it, he explained that these acausal meaningful 
coincidences revealed an underlying unity. We find these events so striking 
because of the way they defy our notions about how separate things are 
related by cause and effect. The coincidence reveals a connection that is 
something else. Like other marginalized "occult" beliefs, this is one of 
those little cases where we can pull back the curtain. SOM is the man behind 
the curtain in this case, of course.

A Definate Case said:
Several times I have pointed out my objections to Pirsig's use of the term 
Quality to name the Tao. The term Quality serves his purpose in his 
discussion of Value but by giving it a name we know he creates the illusion 
that we know it...

dmb replies:
Maybe I missed it last time or just forgot. In any case, I think Pirsig 
likes the term because he wants to say that we do know it. Its not an 
abstraction or a thing you have to believe in or understand, but something 
you already know directly. As in the case of "Blink", the idea is that 
Quality is the first thing you know. Its what you know even before you can 
conceptualize that knowledge. You know if its good or bad right away, even 
before you know what it is. (What smells so good?) This fits with the whole 
metaphysical system and the epistemological starting point I've been talking 
about, but I think the idea of calling it Quality is to keep it from being 
an abstract or exotic. It has a way of putting Quality right in your lap, 
makes it ordinary and natural. You know, it exists in the gears of a bike 
and hangs in the butcher shop window.

Despite my butting in here, I don't know what Marsha's question was. Judging 
from the answer, Marsha asked why shit happens. Somehow, I don't think she'd 
ask that. I don't mean to be glib or dismissive here but it seems to me that 
question is a bit crazy. I mean, why the hell not? Why should we expect an 
absence of shit? Of course shit happens. The rain doesn't care who gets wet. 
That's what Jesus and the weather man says.

...So bring an umbrella and say Amen?

Thanks,
dmb

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