[MD] The relativity of the MoQ

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 28 Aug 2009 at 22:30, Andre Broersen wrote:

> Platt doesn't  want to hear of this...to him (and Ham)  any sort of
> togetherness (expression of common roots, descendency/ sharing of
> origins through mythology, upbringing,thought patterns, belief, culture etc,
> etc)  is communal (ism) , collectiv (ism), commun(ism).
> Anything that may bring us a little closer together as human becomings is
> rejected out of hand. Keep up the divisions, individual freedom
> (misunderstanding freedom... read Pirsig Platt and quote me the appropriate
> line...but, as a good Eastern influence...[as Pirsig suggests his words
> should be understood] also read between the lines!!!).

You want a quote from Pirsig?. Read this, then tell us what you read 
between the lines.

"My personal feeling is that this is how any further 
improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making 
Quality decisions and that´s all. God, I don´t want to have any 
more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for 
big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These 
can be left alone for a while. There´s a place for them but 
they´ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the 
individuals involved. We´ve had that individual Quality in the 
past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and 
now it´s just about depleted. Everyone´s just about out of 
gumption. And I think it´s about time to return to the 
rebuilding of this American resource...individual worth. There 
are political reactionaries who´ve been saying something close 
to this for years. I´m not one of them, but to the extent 
they´re talking about real individual worth and not just an 
excuse for giving more money to the rich, they´re right. We do 
need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-
fashioned gumption. We really do."

> Own up PLatt as you always have avoided...defending your selfrighteous,
> individualistic, self-assertive notions of freedom doing nothing more that
> inflating a leaky ego drawing everything unto itself and, failing keep on,
> screeming harder and harder and pointing the finger at anyone who may be
> responsible for deflating your ego because you have to find, by blaming
> everything and everybody else not thinking alike you, a culprit that keeps
> the ego pump down.

You can do better than name-calling, Andre. You really can.

> And you say: All is One.
> Do you realise that this is the perfection of mystical communal thinking?

I would call it the perfection of mystical individual thinking. There's no 
such thing as "communal thinking." Only zombies and robots all think 
alike. 

> I think the MoQ is a fusion. Not any one culture is perfect, some are more
> conducive to allowing DQ than other cultures...

Right. As Pirsig pointed out, capitalist cultures are more conducive to 
DQ than socialist ones. 

> but here we are talking of DQ
> as GOOD ( sorry Platt and Ham!!)...as creating those conditions to set up
> deeper understandings... deepening our awareness...our consciousness of that
> which is reality.

Yes, deepening our understanding, one person at a time.

> Consciousness is selective awareness. Selective awareness brought about by
> those processes Pirsig talks about in ZMM. Through Lila he has cleared a
> path for us all to tred and expand our own levels of consciousness.
> Pirsig never said: 'Follow me!!' The choice is up to us which path we want
> to follow...through the head, heart and hand or some other way.

Right. Pirsig never said "Vote for me and I will lead you to the promised 
land." The choices are left up to each of us, individually, not as cult.
 
> Of course the MoQ is Pirsig's philosophy...however one's ideas always stand
> upon the shoulders of someone else's. You cannot hold that against him or
> Jesus, or Einstein or the Buddha, Newton, Whitman, Bohm, Sidis, Muhammed,
> me, you or anyone else
> 
> Kill all intellectual patterns (including the MoQ!!) completely, follow DQ
> and morality will be served.
> 
> Thing is, when you die, you are the only one that dies... no one else is
> there for you or with you.. 'And in the end, the love you take , is equal to
> the love you make'.

You said it. Once and individual always an individual. To others you are 
just another experience. sometimes good, sometimes otherwise. But the 
toughest battle you'll ever have is to be yourself against the demands of 
others to be something else.

Platt