[MD] Drama with Nicholas Maxwell

[ian glendinning]

SA,

The rules quip is meant to suggest that those who think rules are hard
and fast, are the fools. Wise (pragmatic) men / women understand that
they are really just for guidance, and bend / interpret / them
accordingly. (There is some debate about where the adage originates
but Doug Bader the legless air-ace is attributed with using it - to
justify flying a plane with no feet on the pedals.)

There are endless paradoxical corrolaries of the "rule" as Jos spotted
- like you probably wouldn't want fools breaking the rules anyway. ie
breaking the rules is not in itself a sign of being wise - oh no
siree.

I'll come back to you on the other references.

Incidentally I'm just reading a 1975 "Oui" interview with Pirsig.
In response to a question about why there is so much argument about
what is true or good he says "The good is not something that can be
captured in a little box of dialectic .... The idea that something is
rigidly true leads to an irretractable conflict"

Ian

On 7/31/07, Heather Perella <spiritualadirondack at yahoo.com> wrote:
>     [Ian]
> > Hi SA, no takers for this thread ?
>
>     Yeah... I don't know if anybody read his works.
> I also think what is at issue here is 'all in the
> head' philosophy in comparison with pragmatic
> philosophies (such as the MoQ).  What do people do
> with their ideas?  What do people do?  What events are
> happening in people's lives?  What on the intellectual
> level is driving these social institutions and
> informal personal relations, which becomes a feedback
> system where culture is informed, founding the
> intellectual level, and therefore groups of people are
> not raging mobs.
>
>    [Ian]
> > Great to see Maxwell being picked-up.
> > Incidentally, you writing about your workplace
> > experience of newcomers
> > joing the local "culture" ... I also wrote some very
> > similar words
> > about my then current workplace when I did my
> > Masters thesis. There is
> > a copy on-line, but I'll try and dig out the
> relevant bits.
>
>     I find dq to be very important.  Direct
> experience is an event that not only involves the
> intellect, but the social, etc...  To sit idly
> thinking we are NOT doing anything that involves other
> people (I really don't have anybody in mind here, and
> ironically I don't vote but anyways...) is a misnomer
> and unawareness of what's happening in ones life
> daily.  Where's your thesis on-line?
>
>     [Ian]
> > Agreed. Rule are for the guidance of wise men an the
> > the enslavement of fools (only). I may have said.
>
>    Are you saying, those that experience or feel
> enslaved by rules are fools, and those that don't have
> this perception and accept rules are wise?
>
>
> blue sky, notin' but blue sky,
> SA
>
>
>
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