[MD] Wanted: A proper foundation

[X Acto]

Ham:
You should know that I am a renegade in this forum, and there are some here who will attack anything I say.  I don't particularly enjoy their virulence, but it has afforded me some latitude to speak my mind on certain issues. Although you will find that Pirsig's philosophy is unashamedly anti-theistic, I've discovered that the label "nihilist" is more offensive to its acolytes than any criticism one can make.  So insulting is this word that antagonists have tried to construe my valuistic philosophy as a form of nihilism.

Ron:
What I tire of is your double standards. What is insulting is your attitude.
You color yourself more a renegade than you are treated as one. I attack your inconsistency and contempt. Your antagonist
simply states that your charge of speaking like a true nihilist when speaking about dropping notions of a universally defined metaphysics
is pejorative and unfounded. A case of the pot calling the kettle nihilist.
What is insulting is the manner in which you use this word and Your snide assumptive rhetoric you use to dismiss someone who disagrees with you. 
Your ideas are fine. I even like most of them. But I can do without the condescending hooey. In it's context nihilism denies universal meaning.
Essentialism denies universal meaning. A valuistic philosophy can be nothing but nihilistic in nature, it's base being in pluralistic relativity..
This is not an attack, it is a statement waiting for an argument otherwise. If you have a viable defense lets hear it instead of this 
rhetorical self pity used to garner sympathy from a new member. You say my sophistry is astounding. So far you have given me no solid defense.

[Ron]:
> Then you negate your own argument. How do you propose
> to make the distinction between Truth and fantasy?
> If you are proposing that the myth you have created
> is of value guiding the life experience, then admitting such
> and demonstrating uses and benefits would be most welcomed,
> but your claims equate absolute truth with any other myth. 

Ham:
We tend to get hung up on "labels" instead of the concepts they're meant to express or interpret.  Truth is such a label.  It can mean "legitimate", "factual",  "evident", "axiomatic", "universal", "wisdom", or even "moral goodness", depending on the context.  Myth is another label, often used pejoratively (as when you refer to my ontology as a myth).  One man's "truth" is another man's "fantasy".  Philosophical theories are hypotheses, and I make no claim to having discovered the tree of knowledge and truth, nor does Pirsig.  Although Essentialism is not a pragmatic philosoophy, I do demonstrate the value of free choice and the efficacy of rational self-directed value in human affairs.

Ron:
This is why I find merit in it but this still doesn't address the question of verifiability with experience and how one is able to discern your
Philosphy from theism, mythology, or hallucination. The term "myth" used to describe your philosophy
 was not intended pejoratively as you would use nihilism, I give myth great value. It is exactly those myths which meet contact with experience which
gives what we understand as factual meaning.

So lets move this forward on this issue:


 Meaning, is it emotional? are we pulled toward certain patterns because it triggers
pleasurable stimuli? Compelled by nature in an un realizable grander pattern ? The mystical experience, why we value. Do we value just to be?
Is it the price of existence? Is it enough to be content with the miracle of being? for the shear appreciation of existence?. I say Yes.
If reality is a morality it is one that works on aesthetic. source, then, is the pattern of being, it's unity lies in that it IS each moment. 
I feel a mature self does not need an outside source to relate to for purpose in life, the very concept is inhibiting to
the possiblities of the artistic expression of being and individuality.

Nihlism is a loaded term used by your generation for atheists and scientists who denied an objective God seperate and distinct from ourselves.
For those who sought reason over traditional blind faith. For those who dared think for themselves outside the bounds of cultural norms.
In other words a nihlist is an individual agent in the strictest sense. One who takes the burden of purpose and meaning apon themselves.