[MD] The MOQ and Death

[John Carl]

Ham,

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Ham Priday <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:

  But perhaps I am too obtuse in my explications.  In my younger days, I was
> considered a "square".



Gasp.  No.  It can't be true, Ham.  You?  A square?  I'd never have guessed.

</irony>

To tell the truth, I feel exactly like Marsha expresses, wherein I often
find myself in internal metaphysical speculations and suddenly realize, Hey,
this sounds like what Ham is saying.

Royce said it may take a thousand years to fully grasp a great philosopher's
thought.  Hopefully that will be true for you Ham, and your "heroic journey"
will not have been in vain.  Even though now you don't get much affirmation
let's attribute it to widespread stupidity not of your making and be
charitable.

On the other hand, and not to bring you down or anything, Royce's
postulation might likely be entirely wishful thinking since humanity's
discourse just seems to degrade more and more.



> I suppose being seen as "cool" is a step up in the right direction ;-).
>

I have a good friend, Chris, who is so extremely square that he's actually
cool.  With a doctorate in biochemistry, he nerdishly explores the
interactions of mind and psychoactive substances and such.

What I notice in him as "cool" is the cool disregard for what society says
is good, and stays faithful to his own explorations into the life he's been
handed.

And he makes a mean chocolate cake from scratch, too.


You are absolutely right.  They are beyond our capacity to know because all
> knowledge come from experience, and we do not--can not--know Absolute Truth
> or experience the Absolute Source.



Ok, but there's knowing and then there's KNOWING.  Right?  Like I was
ruminating on that song about the gambler, and KNOWING when to hold 'em and
KNOWING when to fold 'em.

Who KNOWs? We guess the best we can and if experience confirms after the
fact that things worked out ok, THEN we know.  THEN we realize after the
fact of our guess.  Then our guess becomes a known.

There's no knowing in the moment.  Only in reflection.

And yet we do sense an existence of absolute value, upon reasoned
reflection.  Experience is that which has already occured, and reflection is
what reveals meaning.   In a sense that is all the experience of the
Absolute Source we can have.  That is all there is.  But isn't that enough?
 Doesn't that qualify then as an experience of the absolute?

I mean, since it's all there is, it's all there is.






> That's why you turn to Buddhism and mystic poets like Rumi whose soothing
> words and images bolster your confidence that everything will come out all
> right in the end.  But escaping from reality doesn't fulfill the "need to
> know", which is philosophy's quest.  And Steve has put his finger on the
> bottom line of this quest: What is to become of us when we cease to be?
>

Now there's a koan for you.  What becomes of us when we cease to be?

However, your statement about "escaping reality" escapes understanding.
 Where are you gonna run?  Where is "not reality"?  What a silly idea.
 Marsha is not escaping reality, she is escaping YOUR reality, your
intellectual, square reality but reality is a whole and in rejecting the
partial she's affirming the whole.  She's entering reality.



> Mysticism, Religion, and Mythology have all sought to satisfy man's innate
> "spiritual" needs.  Philosophers, for the most part, have relied on their
> intellect and intuitive insight to answer such ultimate questions.  Are
> their conclusions valid?  Some may be.  Are they confirmable?  No.
>
>
Wait a mo.  Pirsig says that such philosophers were firmly grounded in their
mythos. The mythos provides the "stuff" of philosophical speculation.
 Mysticism, Religion and Mythology are just as needed as intellectual and
intuitive insight.  They go hand in hand, are co-creative and co-playful and
never is one without the other.

Confirmation comes in experience.  That's the place your guesses become your
knowns.  Pragmatism is correct in this, that conclusions are always
confirmable, if not confirmed.




> A fundamental maxim which may be unique to my philosophy is that the
> individual is a free agent of Value.  The inaccessibility of empirical proof
> for a primary source, the meaning of life, or the transcendence of death
> ensures man's freedom by preventing his choices from being influenced by
> absolute knowledge.
>

Well you share with the Q'm" - my philosophical stance - the fundamental
freedom and existence of individuality - as experience.  But we differ on
the empiricity of a primary source.  Mine posits that the primary source is
all experience - a pantheistic embrace of reality itself as primary source -
but I'm lazy and it seems simpler to me.

You're statement suffers, imo,  from a default in empiricism which you've
adopted and only Royce and Pirsig, to my knowledge, have unraveled that
empiricism depends upon a pre-selective process that decides "which facts"
are empirically valid.

and before you jump all over me, by all means my statement is illinformed
and uneducated.  There's so many philosophers I haven't read... I just
happen to really like and agree with those two.


>   And to rule out the possibility of a "value complement" that represents
> you and me in the Oneness of Essence "because we can't prove it" is a
> serious mistake in my opinion.
>
>
Well right there I think can say with my whole heart, I agree completely.

John the constant guesser