[MD] Boromir's Journey

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Joe,

You've snipped a bit of a post of mine and pasted a post of Matt's.  
I'm not sure what your point was in doing so. Do you see Matt's post  
as answering mine? Can you explain how?

Best,
Steve




On Sep 21, 2009, at 4:38 PM, Joseph Maurer wrote:

> On Monday 21 September 2009 11.54 AM “Steve Peterson” wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> If belief is a habit of action, as the pragmatists say, is all action
> best described as some belief? Is faith--the aspect of faith that
> does not concern factual belief--something that could benefit from a
> pragmatist's re-describing now that religion fails to speak to so
> many of us?
> <snip>
>
> On Thursday 17 September 2009 11:21 PM “Matt Kundert” wrote:
>
> Logos (word) is ergon (deed).
>
> Maybe that's why, Ron, you've always seemed to me to avoid  
> pragmatism, which
> has at its heart the notion that our word is a deed.  As J. L.  
> Austin once
> said, "our word is our bond."  One might deplore these ephemeral links
> holding up these magical towers in the sky called "culture" and  
> "ego," like
> Andre, but without our word being a deed, an act with consequences,  
> then all
> of this goes away--no computer, no books, no words, no thought, no  
> humanity,
> no humans. It all goes away once we become truly unbonded.
>
> Various Eastern philosophies, and Western for that matter, may _on the
> surface_ suggest the betterness of such a thing, but they don't  
> really.  As
> Steve said, the Buddha exists as well inside a sentence as anything  
> else.
> And Pirsig helps us triumph over such a silly notion as that the
> metaphysical illusion of culture and ego, ipso facto, mean they are
> purposeless fictions that should go away--everything has value.
>
> There are many conversations to be had about what is most valuable,  
> but
> without a doubt, the Logos was the Ergon.
>
> Matt
>
>
>
> On 9/21/09 11:54 AM, "Steve Peterson" <peterson.steve at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I was thinking about Boromir of Lord of the Rings. He was the great
>> warrior from Gondor who betrayed the Fellowship and tried to steal
>> the ring from Frodo causing Frodo to flea and continue the quest
>> alone joined only by Sam.
>>
>> Boromir's Journey was the failure of the Hero's Journey. Boromir
>> answered the call but was not fully committed himself to the quest.
>> The others were devoted to the quest regardless of the chances of
>> success. Boromir did not lack any belief that the others had. There
>> is no talk of belief in a higher authority where Boromir did not
>> believe or did not believe as strongly as the others in that higher
>> authority to set things right. When he argued that their task was
>> impossible, none of the others could disagree. I don't think he had
>> any different assessment of the probability of success for the
>> Fellowship's task as any other members of the Fellowship, yet he was
>> in great despair, and the others were not--at least not to the degree
>> that Boromir was. I think the others had faith and that Boromir's
>> lack of faith destroyed him and that his lack of faith was not a lack
>> of belief. The difference was not the presence of absence of an
>> intellectual structure but an attitude toward the world or trust in
>> the process of life.
>>
>> Though he is a fictional character, the self-destruction of Boromir
>> rings true to me. There is something to faith that is not about
>> belief but about something else that needs to be better articulated.
>> It is something that is important to both believers and nonbelievers.
>> I think the opposite of the sort of faith that Boromir's story is an
>> allegory for is not disbelief but despair and that faith of this sort
>> is not assenting to factual claims but letting go and being
>> comfortable with not being in control of everything. It is possible
>> to believe that God exists and that the Bible is true and still
>> despair. So even religious beliefs do not exhaust faith. I think it
>> is also saying "yes" to life. It is possible to not believe in a
>> divine authority and still feel that the universe is unfolding
>> exactly as it should be often in spite of the facts. It is an
>> attitude tied up in beauty. It is the understanding that the world of
>> our desires--the world that does not include illness, death, and
>> conflict--is not as beautiful and perfect as the world as it actually
>> is.
>>
>> I don't think it is a stretch to say that the story of Boromir is a
>> story about faith since Tolkien was a Christian and is viewed as a
>> Christian writer, so faith is the sort of issue that we may expect
>> him to address in his fiction.
>>
>> What do you think? Is faith the same as factual belief as
>> fundamentalists seem to be saying it is? Or is faith something that
>> is independent of belief as in the case of Boromir? Can you help me
>> articulate what it is?
>>
>> If belief is a habit of action, as the pragmatists say, is all action
>> best described as some belief? Is faith--the aspect of faith that
>> does not concern factual belief--something that could benefit from a
>> pragmatist's re-describing now that religion fails to speak to so
>> many of us?
>>
>> What does any of this have to do with the MOQ? I don't know, maybe
>> you can tell me?
>>
>> Could I be any more geeky than to philosophize about elves, dwarves,
>> and hobbits? Probably not. Can you think of any parallels to
>> Boromir's story in less nerdy culture?
>>
>> Best,
>> Steve
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