[MD] Art of Value

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

>From: "Hamilton Priday" <hampday1 at verizon.net>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
>Subject: Re: [MD] Art of Value
>Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2007 01:59:54 -0500
>
>
>Hi Dan --
>
>Could you please explain the "Cleveland harbor effect"?

Hi Ham

Thank you for writing. The Cleveland harbor effect takes place when we're so 
sure that we know the facts that we ignore signs of the obvious. Robert 
Pirsig describes it in LILA. Phaedrus assumed that he was sailing into a 
harbor down the coast from Cleveland when in fact he was in Cleveland:

-----------------------------------------

A few months back a static filtering had occurred that could have been 
disastrous. It was in an Ohio port where he had come in out of a summer 
storm on Lake Erie. He had just barely been able to sail to windward off the 
rocks through the night until he reached a harbor about twenty miles down 
the coast from Cleveland.

When he got there and was safely in the lee of the jetty he went below and 
grabbed a harbor chart and brought it up and held it, soaking wet, in the 
rain, using the boat's spreader lights to read by while he steered past 
concrete dividing walls, piers, harbor buoys and other markers until he 
found the yacht basin and tied up at a berth.

He had exhausted himself so he slept for most of the next day, and when he 
woke up and went outside it was afternoon. He asked someone how far it was 
to Cleveland.

"You're in Cleveland," he was told.

He couldn't believe it. The chart said he was in a harbor miles from 
Cleveland.

Then he remembered the little "discrepancies" he had seen on the chart when 
he came in. When a buoy had a "wrong" number on it he presumed it had been 
changed since the chart was made. When a certain wall appeared that was not 
shown, he assumed it had been built recently or maybe he hadn't come to it 
yet and he wasn't quite where he thought he was. It never occurred to him to 
think he was in a whole different harbor!

It was a parable for students of scientific objectivity. Wherever the chart 
disagreed with his observations he rejected the observation and followed the 
chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static 
filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not 
fit. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.

If this were just an individual phenomenon it would not be so serious. But 
it is a huge cultural phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build up 
whole cultural intellectual patterns based on past "facts" which are 
extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern 
we don't throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact 
has to keep hammering and hammering and hammering, sometimes for centuries, 
before maybe one or two people will see it. And then these one or two have 
to start hammering on others for a long time before they see it too. (LILA)

--------------------------------------------------------

>Ham:
>Also, in responding to Platt's question concerning whether the individual
>creates the ficticious self or vice-versa, you said:
>
>
> > I think the MOQ would say the individual invents the ficticous self
> > so in a sense we are our own creators.
>
>What is ficticious about the self?  Do you mean that the self is
>non-existent (i.e., nothingness), or simply that is is an illusion?  I have
>been arguing with Arthur Weatherall that "awareness without an object" is
>nothingness, and that the self has no empirical reality.  Is this the sense
>in which you say it is "ficticious"?

Dan:
When I was a boy I used to love reading Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz novels. 
The Tin Man fasincated me most on account of how he kept chopping off parts 
of himself and replacing them with tin until he was all tin. It occurred to 
me that the self is like that... no matter where we look for it, it's not 
there.

I think the MOQ would say there are no subjects and objects, only patterns 
of value. Awareness is an agreement we have formed with each other so that 
we know what we're talking about. It is a convenient shorthand, just like 
objects.

>Ham:
>You go on to explain "suffering" as a Buddhist precept, implying that it is
>also the basis of MoQ morality:
>
> > Buddhism teaches that the solution to suffering is the process of
> > overcoming
> > the pervasive conditioning of seeing the self as separate from the 
>world.
> > We
> > have to understand the true nature of people and things. When the
> > individual
> > self is seen as an empty concept, as a convenient shorthand, Buddhism
> > teaches that we enter a state beyond suffering. The true path is 
>morality.
> > Thus the MOQ is built on morality.
>
>I don't really see the connection between suffering and morality, unless 
>the
>Christian notion of "doing penitence" is considered a moral act.  From what
>little reading I've done on Buddhistic philosophy (including Karen
>Armstrong's recent best-seller), the major goal is to eliminate suffering 
>by
>overcoming Desire. Buddha's premise was that suffering results from 
>desiring
>what one can't possess; so that by ridding ourselves of desire, we 
>eliminate
>suffering.  Although merging the self in Oneness is a stated phase of
>"enlightenment", I don't recall "seeing the self as separate from the 
>world"
>specifically cited in relation to suffering.

Dan:
I've done very little reading on Buddhism myself. When I began my practice I 
was advised not to read Buddhist philosophy as it would only cloud the way 
and I have kept to that advise over the years. I attend retreats 
periodically so what little I know has been picked up through off-hand 
discussions with others. And of course listening to discourses of learned 
ones who happen to expound on what they believe, if I am fortunate enough to 
attend such a gathering.

>From what I know, you are correct in the sense that desire causes suffering. 
What I was pointing out was the second noble truth, the source of that 
desire... the feeling that we are separate and apart from the objects of 
desire.

I know nothing of merging the self in Oneness. I just sit.

>Ham:
>In my opinion, the practice of Buddhism has more in common with
>psychotherapy than with philosophy.  The aim is to savor life in an
>epicurean sense, to live it modestly in a Christian sense, and to avoid
>unnecessary stress by pursuing only reasonable goals.  I think Buddha would
>have shunned metaphysics and ontology on the ground that they exceed man's
>intellectual capacity, thus causing stress and suffering.  He would likely
>have opposed science and technology for the same reason.

Dan:
I don't know much about the Buddha or what he believed. I've read some 
sayings attributed to him and I've read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse which 
was purportedly based on his life. In my practice I have found that vices 
like partaking of intoxicants and smoking tobacco have ceased quite 
naturally. I didn't intend to quit. I just quit. When I write I don't think 
about writing, I just write.

I think living modestly is a relative term. I consider that I live modestly 
in that my home is paid for, I have no debt, and I don't have to worry too 
much about money. On the other hand, I know those who live so much more 
modestly than I that I look like a wastrel in comparison.

>Ham:
>The MoQ may have been built on morality, but morality is man's invention.
>And I disagree that the individual creates himself.  The individual is a
>being-aware.  The sensible self is negated from the uncreated source that
>finite beings perceive as otherness.  Living life fully is not about
>avoiding suffering.  It's realizing the value of what we experience and
>understanding it as the differentiated perspective of an absolute Essence.
>Perhaps in MoQ parlance this would be called "living at the intellectual
>level".  In any case, it has little in common with  Buddhism.

Dan:
To understand the individual as an illusion is very difficult. That's why 
pervasive conditioning is so hard to overcome. I have heard it said that it 
takes many lifetimes of meditation and conditioning to do so. Myself, I do 
not believe in reincarnation yet I do not disbelieve in it either. I try to 
keep an open mind.

>From what I understand, if a person comes to see that suffering arises from 
the notion of separation of self from the world then living life arises 
quite naturally. There is no suffering to avoid. It simply ceases. Thus the 
third noble truth comes to fruition on its own and not through any special 
effort on the part of the practitioner.

>
>But, as Platt has been known to say, I could be wrong.

As could I.

Thank you for reading,

Dan