[MD] Food for Thought

[david buchanan]

Arlo said:
Who is anyone but what they say they are? ...This is, I believe, partly what 
Pirsig was getting at when he talks about the "ridiculous fiction" that is 
"this autonomous little homunculus who sits behind our eyeballs looking out 
through them in order to pass judgment on the affairs of the world". "This 
fictitious "man" has many synonyms: "mankind," "people," "the public," and 
even such pronouns as "I," "he," and "they." Our language is so organized 
around them and they are so convenient to use it is impossible to get rid of 
them. There is really no need to. Like "substance" they can be used as long 
as it is remembered that they're terms for collections of patterns and not 
some independent primary reality of their own." ...In this sense, I'd argue, 
each "identity" is a "collection of patterns" dialogically constructed 
through social settings, or some people call this "identity negotiation". 
There is no "real Arlo", there is only the "Arlo" that is here, that you 
know via the negotiated discourse on this list.

dmb says:
In the recent documentary about Bob Dylan (No Direction Home) one of his 
friends from back in the day said something like, "The remarkable thing 
about Bob is that he isn't anybody in particular." This friend wasn't saying 
Dylan was unimportant or unrecognizable, of course. He was getting at the 
transparent nature of his personality. He was like a sponge, absorbing 
whatever was around him. I guess you'd say he had very little value 
rigidity, a weak sense of self. This might be construed as a negative thing 
in our culture, but I suppose its what turned him into "the voice of a 
generation". Like the culture-bearers before him, he was naturally Zen. It 
was natural him to reflect the values in society at large without 
self-censorship or self-judgement. Our problems were his problems and vice 
versa.

There is also an idea from Alan Watts I heard recently on a local radio 
show. That ridiculous fiction was compared to the illusion created by a 
rapidly moving point of light in the darkness, like a sparkler or a even a 
lit cigarette. If you spin it fast enough and steady enough it no longer 
looks like a point but a circle or an oval or whatever shape the spinning 
takes. The human mind, says Watts, seems like a steady thing, an actual 
entity, but its really just a lot of spinning lights. Spin, spin, spin. Man, 
it can really wear a guy out. And I think the idea behind meditative 
practices is to quite all that spinning. Once those lights stop moving, then 
there can be some peace and quite. This is when the illusory self is 
revealed as such.

Here, in the egomaniacal West, this sort of talk terrifies people as much as 
talking about death.

You know those showmen who spin plates on sticks? That cracks me up. I mean, 
what's the point?! They always seemed way too frantic about a very silly 
thing. I'd just think to myself, plates don't go on sticks and they aren't 
for spinning either. The music was usually good and sometimes their 
assistants were hot, but spinning plates for a living is just plain nuts.

Let 'em fall. Let 'em break. That would be a show to see!

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