[MD] Chopra and the cultural immune system

[Platt Holden]

H All,

I'm not a great fan of Deepak Chopra, but he has an article in the current 
issue of the Washington Post that contains an observation you will 
recognize:

"In my view, paranormal events are neither fringe nor unreal. They are 
simply things not yet admitted into consciousness by our official belief 
system. Reality has this curious habit of keeping certain things under 
wraps until the human mind is willing to look at them, and then all at once 
they appear, changing the world when they do. Germs and gravity were once 
waiting in the wings but now stand center stage. In ancient India, 
astrology was center stage and now has retreated again, for the coming and 
going of phenomena works both ways."

In case you'r wondering, the familiar note is from Pirsig:

"Just as the biological immune system will destroy a life-saving skin graft 
with the same vigor with which it fights pneumonia, so will a cultural 
immune system fight off a beneficial new kind of understanding like that of 
the brujo in Zuni with the same kind of vigor it uses to destroy crime. It 
can't distinguish between them." (Lila, 26)

The "beneficial new kind of understanding" being fought off in academe and 
elsewhere is Pirsig's own MOQ containing the premises that 1) the world is 
a moral order, and 2) cultures can be judged morally by their contribution 
to the evolution of life.

Chopra's article can be found at:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/deepak_chopra/2008/07/why_the_par
anormal_is_normal_1.html

Regards,
Platt