[MD] Ups and Downs

[John Carl]

The first fall is the big thrill.  For one or two seconds your train is in
space, there is no gravity.  A theory is experienced in reality, a mental
concept is confirmed by the pit of your stomach.  And your heart and lungs
and kidneys and toes.  It all adds up to the truths of the laws of momentum
and gravity you read about.  Confirmation.  Confirmation from the experience
of the body for what is riding up on top in the brain.  But your brain is
not usually supplying you much abstractly  conceptual high-level thinking
during such moments; your brain is recording sensory inputs faster than they
can be thought about.  Not faster than conceptualization, but faster than
intellectualization.  The concepts come, the intellect stays quiet.  The
track blurs by, the bottom is reached quickly and g-forces pin you to your
seat and screams arise in your ears.  Something else happens on the Big
Dipper, your wide-open eyes see 12 bright, strobing flashes in rapid
sequence, in an instant.  What has happened is your picture has been taken,
but we are taking this ride in sequence and seeing pictures is what happens
when you get off the ride.  Right now you are immersed in it and the
immediate experience is of a succession of ups and downs.  Your body,
playing games with gravity.


And metaphysically, when I swoop down from the intellectual heights of a new
idea or with a new consciousness and carrying with me my new perspective of
the whole, there is a thrill I feel and there is a happiness that stays with
me through the ups and downs.    On the roller coaster, gravity is god.  In
life's roller coaster, what we experience in our ups and downs is a
valuistic relation to what is good.  When things are good, we feel high.
When things are bad, we feel low.


A physical roller coaster, constrained by the static laws of physics,  will
follow every up with a down and every down with an up.  The roller coaster
of life is not so predictable.  Some people seem to find an upward path with
very few dips - short shallow ones and others just fall screaming into
endless holes.


On the other hand, the physical roller coaster is not very responsive to
your momentary will.  There's a place of fear or two where you want to get
off, you ask the train to stop and it doesn't.  Knowing all about the laws
of gravity does not mean you can change them.


On my metaphysical roller coaster of life, I can.  My thoughts themselves
make up the shape and structure of the world-view paradigm metaphysical
outlook of life that I am riding.  Perspective brings knowledge brings
choice.  That is part of the perspective of Quality as the underlying,
over-riding, dynamic generator of my world.  The power of the up.   Sure,
you've got ups and downs, but the only reason you have any momentum at all
is because you start out going up - a force outside your narrow self takes
you up.    LIke wise, metaphysical Quality has a good that put you here, or
you wouldn't be here.  This  has to be a positive force, empirically
experienced as self-evident.  Royce and Pirsig, by placing Good as absolute
and letting the metaphysical map flow from that point, solve all my
philosophical problems which grants me perfect perspective.  Ok, "perfect"
is a super-exaggeration - only good perspective.


Quality gives me Good perspective.



But then, how is perspective that is good, any different than perfection?
Often in construction when a cut is right on the money, it's "perfect", even
though we know that with a microscope you could detect lines wavering and
slight deviation.  But we mean perfect when it works to specification,
that's all we really need.


With the right perspective, we can make the right choices and solve the
social ills of our world.   And we will.


Just as soon as we get off this stupid roller coaster and get back to real
life.