[MD] Science Wars

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Andre]
Something like that or is this too simple a representation?

[Arlo]
Yeah, I think that captures it. "Intellectual patterns" remove us 
from the DQ moment of NOW! but they also afford us great power in 
controlling the flow of the future. "Purpose" is one such pattern, 
that attempts to derive "power-to-act" in the future by encoding the 
past in a certain way. As such it can be a great motivator, and can 
inspire people to do great things. But it can also inspire great 
evil. Dharma, the point of Quality, is in the NOW! and as such 
approaching it requires the abandonment of all intellectual patterns 
(which, of course, includes "purpose"). Like "the self", "purpose" is 
a nice illusion that should be held when useful but only lightly and 
always with the understanding that it is a metaphor, a tool, a 
device, nothing more. When "purpose" becomes seen as more than this, 
when it becomes a "reality" outside human intellectual constructions, 
then one is back in that S/O land the MOQ tries to overcome (not to 
mention in a dead, mechanistic cosmos where we are naught but 
marionnettes enacting some god's whims).

And let's be honest. Apart from appealing to the human affective need 
to feel special, "Purpose" is nearly always a control word. As such, 
I personally find it better to avoid the concept altogether. Its 
limiting, stagnating, manipulative and pandering. Beer will almost 
always make you feel the same way as "purpose" does, but without the 
haughty narcissism and philosophical inanity of "purpose".