[MD] MeTaPhYsic of MaDneSs

[Ham Priday]

Platt [Ron and Peter mentioned] --


[Ham, to Ron]:
> Aren't you simply saying that shared experience leads to
> knowledge "by consensus", while proprietary experience
> cannot be universally validated?

[Platt]:
> To clarify -- any difference between "proprietary" and
> "individual" experience?

No, none at all.   I throw in "proprietary" once in a while as a reminder 
that all awareness is subjective (a word that Pirsigians dislike).  But it 
hasn't done any good.
They're still musing on the future of AI and robotic intelligence. 
Example: Peter's reference to "the production of mechanical beings from 
truly intelligent autonomous ones," and his speculation that that "with 
implants we may soon be able to simulate telepathy."  It doesn't seem to 
make any difference whether intellect is "real" or "simulated".

Ron apparently believes that human appreciation of value is a "mystical" 
experience.

[Ron]:
> Religious experiences, visions, art are extensions of undefined
> experience that are not necessarily metaphysical except by
> analogy, becoming in your parlance a definition of MYSTICISM.
>
> Art and religion have had profound impact on the values of
> my individual.

What these comments tell me is that 'proprietary' has no meaning in Pirsig's 
scheme of things.  The individual, like awareness, knowledge and intellect, 
is just a pattern (or patterns) of cosmic quality without any cosmic 
significance.  They've discounted subjectivity -- the experiential locus of 
reality -- and made it a byproduct of nature and collective society. 
Whatever value or morality means relates to the universe, not to man. 
Existence (their God) moves in strange ways toward "betterness", and we must 
latch on to the collective intellect if we are to keep up.

In his exhortation to "embrace evolution", Peter goes on to say ...

[Peter]:
> Homo superior is the problem - humans as superior than other life.
> This is damaging nonsense.  We are inseparable from all
> phenomena - from the earth - at the fundamental level. tat tvam asi.
> For something to be superior requires a reciprocal inferiority on
> the part of the other.  This sounds like a (psychopathological)
> complex to me.

This is a take-off on the Noble Savage idea, and it reminds me again of the 
Tibetan prayer wheel.   If we can enhance the intellect's speed and 
efficiency mechanically, so much the better.  Perhaps we should do away with 
human beings altogether, since it's their SOM perspective that is messing up 
the universe.

Sorry to be so negative, Platt.  Occasionally something is said here that 
makes sense to me.  But it's a rare occasion, indeed, and it invariably 
leads to "clarification" according to "Pirsig says".  They think the MoQ 
overcomes the wall between awareness and beingness, but try walking through 
that wall.  We live and move in a world differentiated by being-aware.  We 
are hard-wired to experience by that dichotomy.  Only intuitive logic can 
rise above experiential existence and allow a conception of ultimate 
reality.  Unfortunately, it isn't found in Pirsig's Quality heirarchy.

Warmest regards,
Ham