[MD] Two Realizations

[MarshaV]

it was april fool's day, and while I was not born on that day, it was close 
enough to once a year consider myself a fool and consider the implication 
of my foolishness 



On Apr 3, 2010, at 6:47 PM, John Carl wrote:

> "A crucial feature of Royce's doctrine of interpretation was to develop a
> cooperative form of mediation between what he called dyadic dangerous
> pairs.  In War and Insurance where this idea is developed extensively,
> Royce, in a seeming reconciliation of a Hobbesian view of aggressive man and
> a human view of a natural human sympathy, declares that "By nature, man both
> loves and hates his neighbor."
> 
> Human individuals, says Royce, both nourish and inflame each other; one
> cannot do without the other; but when together there is often a quarrel, for
> each has a different quest or interest.
> 
> Royce writes "the dyadic, the dual, the bilateral relations of man and man,
> of each man to his neighbor, are relations fraught with social danger.  A
> pair of men is what I call a dangerous community."
> 
> Indeed, in line with family process therapy, Royce notes that "when mutual
> friction once arises between a pair of lovers or of rivals or of individuals
> otherwise interestingly related.. the friction tends to increase, unless
> some other relation intervenes..."
> 
> The resolution of the tension depends, for Royce, on establishing a new and
> creative social tie between them, an enrichment of the community beyond the
> two.  What is needed, is an interpreter B, whose task is to interpret A's
> interests to C and B's interest to A, therby creating, making conscious, and
> carrying out a common or united will.  If successful, C will create,
> sustain, and increase harmony between A and B.
> 
> The interpreter, says Royce, has the function "to transform the essentially
> dangerous pair into the consciously and consistently harmonious triad.
> Royce calls the interpreter, the "Spirit of the Community".
> 
> Dr. Jackie,
> 
> Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities: Toward a Roycean Public Policy
> 
> 
> Don't you think the role of the Zuni Shaman to his people fit this role of
> interpreter?  Interpreting the white man's world to his people?
> 
> At the same time, the white man's world interpreted a new meaning to the
> tribal elders regarding this one persecuted individual - that it ain't might
> that makes right.  Or if it is, we're mightier than you and we say he
> doesn't deserve to be hung for arguing with tradition.
> 
> And finally, the Zuni interprets his culture to the white man's world,
> learning and teaching songs and histories handed down for generations and in
> danger of being otherwise lost.  The triad comes full circle.
> 
> When Steve Marquis plead as his reason for joining MD, his conflict with me,
> he was seeking an interpreter.  I think I understood that intuitively then,
> but I didn't have this nifty intellectual underpinning to the process in
> place, that Royce has given me lately.  And thus a whole new way of
> analyzing patterns occurs now that I had no way of seeing then.
> 
> This led me to two realizations this week, about the old conflict.
> 
> How best to describe that conflict is in relating it to what we already know
> and agree upon.  Namely, that when Rigel, definitely one of "those people"
> who never quite got ZAMM, asks the captain, Do you think Lila Blewitt has
> Quality?  And the captain says "yes",  in an automatic and intuitive way. By
> Royce's analysis, he acts as an interpreter between that dangerous dyadic
> pair, Rigel and Lila, who have followed their static patterns to the
> inevitable conflictual place that pairs always come to.
> 
> 
> This is one realization I made just this week, that takes the sting out of a
> similar question about my Quality that arose, where Steve said I didn't have
> any.  More specifically, he stated the reason that he didn't care to
> socialize with me as much as I wanted to socialize with him, was because I
> was a low-Quality person.
> 
> That really stung.  I mean if Steve had been just a Rigel, who really didn't
> understand the MoQ, it'd be easy to diss his dismissal of moi.
> 
> .  But Steve and I had been friends for more than thirty years, and the last
> twenty of those years much centered upon RMP's writings and the question of
> Quality in general.  His was certainly and informed opinion.
> 
> If anybody's was.
> 
> It took me quite aback when he levied it at me with such force and
> certainty.  Like he had authoritative backup for the assertion.  Something
> that seemed to him, empirically verifiable.
> 
> It made me really mad.
> 
> For one thing, I thought that of all people, Steve ought to have a higher
> opinion of me than would be met by a quick judgement of outward appearance.
> He was pointing to my outward appearance as the obviation of my "romantic
> quality".  That is, in the world of surface appearances, I'm the beer can
> shim in the handlebars of life.
> 
> We both knew that.  But what changed suddenly, was his viewing of my
> classical aspect.  My intellectual Quality.  There we had a sudden and
> vicious conflict that I never suspected or saw coming.  It was only this
> week in re-thinking these old issues, that I realized an assumption I'd been
> making that was completely unwarranted on my part.  And in retrospect, was a
> very foolish assumption as well.
> 
> I figured Steve had ample empirical evidence for my intellectual Quality,
> even if I was a social zero.  After all, he'd known me since I was 14 years
> old.  Longer than any other person in my life except for my family of
> brother, cousins and parents.  And closer than them because they'd live all
> over and in various separations, but Steve and I were always close.
> 
> Close in proximity, but not emotionally.  Steve was always part of my life,
> but we were never really close.  I don't even know his birthdate, or what
> time of year it comes.  Asking favors of Steve is always extremely awkward,
> because he hates so much to be imposed upon that I feel bad in asking just
> in seeing his face fall.
> 
> I used to visit him about four times a year when he lived in Sacramento with
> his cat, working for McClellan on the F-111.  I think I was, if not his only
> visitor, I was his most regular.  He had a great collection of Sci Fi books,
> a genre we both loved.  In hardcover and alphabetized on his shelves.  I'd
> loved to have borrowed them and read them, but I remember the pain that came
> over his face when I'd hinted at such, at removing from his shelves a member
> of his collection, his family.
> 
> His cat just hid under the bed till I left.
> 
> When his dad died, and he moved onto the old family place on Sweetland road,
> where he'd been born, with his new russian bride and new daughter, Lu and I
> were about the only options socially for an extremely introverted
> misanthrope and his non-english speaking wife, and thus the de facto society
> that every family needs.  And I'd been arguing for philosophically for
> years  with Steve.
> 
> I figured if nothing else, this was a pragmatic demonstration of the truth
> of my assertion against rugged individualism.  Oxsana came from a socialist
> nation.  She couldn't comprehend the non-social nature of Steve's
> existence.  His only surviving relatives were a 90 year old uncle and aunt.
> 
> 
> If nothing else, Steve would be crazy to cut off my eager offerings of
> social intercourse because it would make his wife very unappy.  But I think
> that really doesn't solve the true problem in a life-long argument with a
> friend, that sometimes winning the argument means losing the friendship.  It
> becomes an unequal proposition when one side wins.
> 
> That's what Royce helped me to intellectualize with his ""when mutual
> friction once arises between a pair of lovers or of rivals or of individuals
> otherwise interestingly related.. the friction tends to increase, unless
> some other relation intervenes..."
> 
> And that is why reading Steve's plea in the MD archives for intervention,
> gives me a frission of new revelation.
> 
> Or as a famous person once said.  "a realization is the most important thing
> you will ever make.
> 
> 
> The second revelation this week, regarding Steve's misunderstanding of me,
> even though he knew me, he didn't really know me.  Needs much, much more
> explanation.
> 
> Almost enough for me to stop and say, "hey.  Why burdeneth thou the MD, when
> the MD never offered to cure your personal problems guy.?"
> 
> Because that is also part of the story.  I did ask the MD for help.  I did
> then, and I do now.  Even as Steve begs for an interpreter.  He wanted to
> know, "Is not the static reliance upon DQ itself a trap?"  He was talking
> about me.  He was asking a legitimate question to which judgement is still
> pending.
> 
> We could defer it to another day.  But I"m feeling like addressing it now.
> 
> Due to that second realization and all.
> 
> 
> The second realization, that Steve didn't know me as well as he thought he
> did centers around a couple of small pieces of experience I had that I never
> really described or explained to anybody in the whole world, except for Lu.
> And even she doesn't quite get the entire context, in many ways.  She was
> never a student of George Sessions, for one thing.
> 
> George was one strong influence that Steve and I had in common.  He mentions
> him in his posting to MD as, one of those "some teachers should be
> cloned".    Steve went through Sierra College ahead of me and when I wasn't
> much part of his life at the time because I was down south framing houses in
> Visalia, newly married to my high school sweet heart and only girlfriend so
> far.  But later, I moved back up to Grass Valley and went to Sierra in
> Rocklin myself.  And took Logic from Sessions.
> 
> I've mentioned George before on this list.  He co authored the book on Deep
> Ecology.  His master thesis was a refutation of the environmental movement
> as anthropocentric.  He was also a good friend of Gary Snyder, naturally,
> living up the hill from Sierra.  George had a big influence on a lot of
> people.  Some couldn't stand him, but those who "got him" loved him with a
> big and unforgettable love.
> 
> If I need say anymore to commend him to this group, let me just say that it
> was George who introduced Steve and me both to ZAMM and the philosophy of
> RMP.  This was in pre-Lila days, so I never found out what Sessions would
> have made of the MoQ.  He was a Spinozaist himself. Pantheist, if anything.
> But make no doubt: a teacher of Quality.
> 
> And he really liked me.
> 
> But I didn't really know how to explain this to Steve.  I felt it was an
> important point in my defense, if my intellect was being attacked, that this
> one teacher we both respected, respected me.  Part of the problem is that
> I'm sort of weird in those situations where I get a lot of (what I feel is)
> undeserved affirmation.  With Sessions, it happened twice.
> 
> Besides Logic, he taught a very interesting course called "Rationality,
> Mysticism and the Environment."  At the beginning of the course he'd explain
> that most of the people in the class would quickly drop out, because this
> was a very intensive course, with a lot of reading and a virtually
> graduate-level intensity required.  He recommended to me the course because
> he'd enjoyed my participation in his logic class, and thought I'd benefit
> from it.
> 
> He was right.  I went into that course as an agnostic future attorney, and
> came out a carpenter deep ecologist, so you could definitely say it changed
> my life.
> 
> There we other people in the class who were also bright and knowledgeable.
> More so than me.  I came pretty much with a beginner's mind, a
> fundamentalist background and a very conservative republican,
> anti-environmentalist dad.  But one thing that stopped me short, was a
> little speech George gave one day about the relative intellectual merits of
> individuals as a causative in society and told the class that as far as he
> was concerned, John was probably smarter than himself in these matters.
> 
> It got quiet and my face burned and I didn't know what to say.  I mean, what
> would you say?  Splutter and object?  I couldn't.  There was a certain sense
> in what he was saying that I knew was true.  I didn't know how to explain
> it, but ideas had been pouring through me and into me and out of me that I
> couldn't glibly dismiss.
> 
> But I couldn't really stand up and crow either because it seemed weird even
> to me.  And besides, who was George comparing me too?  Not exactly the creme
> de la creme of the intellectual crop.  I was in jr college fer chrissake.
> 
> But still.  It weighed with me when Steve and I had philosophical
> discussion.  Sure, I ain't a genius.  But I ain't chopped liver neither.
> 
> I even tested George's opinion of me somewhat.  After my divorce, I went
> back to Sierra, and got involved along a whole new lilne of social
> development.  That was when I met Bill, grandson of Neal, and the
> InterVarsity episode which landed me Lu.  But I dipped my toes in the
> philosophical waters again.  Those days I was mainly involved with college
> for the free showers in the gym and the library open till 10:00.  I was
> living in the back of my truck, beside a stream and about as close to
> homeless as a guy can get.  I took Intro to Philosophy just to see if George
> remembered me and on the first day of class, talking about the potential for
> Philsophy to change the world he pointed at me as one of the most brilliant
> minds he'd encountered.
> 
> Naturally I dropped the class and never talked to George again.
> 
> I mean, who could possibly live up to that kind of billing and expectation?
> My brain seized and my heart pounded and I got out of there as fast as I
> could.
> 
> But years later when my friend Steve is accusing me of low-Quality, I'm
> thinking back to that experience... And I get all huffy to myself thinking I
> shouldn't have to remind Steve of this.
> 
> But just this week, I realize... wait a minute.  Did I ever tell him that
> story?  I don't think I did.  On one hand, how embarrassing, on the other,
> what a cool guy I am to not go all braggin' on myself like some people do.
> 
> 
> 
> Fools will want unwarranted status,
>       Deference from fellow monks,
> Authority in the monasteries,
>       And homage from good families.
> "Let both householders and renunciants
>       Believe that I did this.
>       Let them obey me in eerie task!"
> Such are the thoughts of a fool
>       Who cultivates desire and pride.
> 
> The way to material gain is one thing,
>       The path to Nirvana another.
> Knowing this, a monk who is the Buddha's disciple
>       Should not delight in being venerated,
>       But cultivate solitude instead.
> 
> 
> The Dhammapada: A New Translation of the Buddhist Classic with Annotations
>   by Gil Fronsdal as recently posted by Marsha the beloved.
> 
> 
> Part of this revelation of mine involved an even earlier frustration with
> Steve, when my first wife Deanna and he had conversed about me, and my
> character, and they both concurred that I thought I was smarter than others,
> which was annoying to them both.  She told me this later in a way of rubbing
> my nose int he poor opinion of myself in the eyes of my friends.
> 
> It hurt, at the time.  I admit.  And part of that same old hurt was an idea
> in my mind that "why doesn't Steve understand that my opinion of my own
> intellect isn't completely unfounded?  That there's some evidence for this?"
> 
> But along with my realization of his ignorance of George's opinion of me
> this week, I also realized I'd made a hugely unwarranted assumption that
> time as well.  This involving our common boarding school experience.
> 
> Steve was a couple of years ahead of me.  A Junior my Freshman year, and
> Senior and friend to me my Sophmore.  A visitor and rescuer from doldrums in
> my jr and sr. years, coming to visit in his dodge 440 charger with the
> quadrophonic 8 track blasting black sabbath.
> 
> I was at that school mainly because of a friendship with a guy who was the
> star of the place - Johnny Eggers.  His mom was the school registrar, his
> dad the jobs coordinater and construction teacher I worked for.  I'd known
> Johnny when we both went to VHM in Santa Cruz, an SDA parochial school,
> grades 1-10 where we'd been in eighth grade together and became good
> friends, even though he was perfect in every way and I was not.
> 
> He's a Dr, today, btw.  Predicatably.  He got nothing but A's his whole life
> except for a C in English by a teacher who was notorious for giving nothing
> but.  Really pissed him off.
> 
> Everybody in the whole school and world knew that Johnny Eggers was smart.
> Our school had this ceremony where he was up in front of the school, getting
> an award for getting the highest scores on his college boards, but
> unbeknownst to any, I'd actually scored higher.
> 
> His mom explained it to me, since I'd qualified for a National Merit
> Scholarship, she'd assumed I'd fill out the necessary paperwork and send it
> in and I'd get the scholarship and they'd have a ceremony then.
> 
> She assumed wrongly.  But in a way it was embarrassing for her.  It appeared
> to an objective observer that she'd slighted the one who beat her son in the
> great game of intellectual measurement.
> 
> Furthurmore, in a visit to her in the year following my graduation, she
> assured me that I'd gotten the highest SAT's in her ten years of being the
> school registrar. Steve was included in her reign, so being of the extremely
> intelligent person I am, I was able to reason that I'd beat his objective
> intellectual measurement so his disparagement of my intellect was completely
> unfounded.
> 
> I didn't say this, at the time.  Or ever, for that matter.  Till now, that
> is.  But it wrankled a bit.
> 
> Till this week when I realized Steve didn't know that stuff.  Even though
> we'd been friends a long time, most of our relationship had centered around
> him, and his problems, his issues.  I knew him pretty well.  He didn't know
> me at all.
> 
> I needed an interpreter.
> 
> Steve needed an interpreter.
> 
> We both looked to MD.
> 
> He got his answer then.  He really respected the thinking on this forum.
> The high quality intellection impressed his socially-starved soul.  He said
> he could barely keep up with the intellectual quality he found on this
> list.  Why he understood, that Robert Pirsig HIMSELF sometimes communicated
> with members of this list, affirming what they thought.
> 
> 
> So therefore, in a conflictual situation like he had, it was natural to
> appeal to authority. It would be natural to pay attention to the designated
> authority had to say about his problems.
> 
> I wonder what that was?  I wonder what response he got?
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