[MD] Boromir's Journey

[Joseph Maurer]

Hi Steve, and all,

I was musing on "Logos (word) is ergon (deed).


On 9/21/09 3:37 PM, "Steve Peterson" <peterson.steve at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 ³Steve Peterson² 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 ³Matt Kundert² 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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>> 
>> 
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