[MD] a-theism and atheism

[John Carl]

Platt and Mark,

As far as dmb goes, I think I posted something relevant on the subject, its
hard to say, gmail has been burping me off a bit today, but hopefully so,
and hopefully you've had a chance to read and will understand that to which
I'm referring when I say I don't take Pirsig's accolades lightly, but I take
my own even more seriously and I remember from way back that I was a big fan
of dmb myself, at one time and offered up evidence from then.

So what happened?  We can't know for certain, it could be a lot of factors.
Lives are lived and change happens.  He's much busier now, which means less
time to reflect and think, and I wonder if the accolades themselves have a
deleterious effect.  "Whom the gods destroy, they first make proud" and
nothing like a little praise to make one proud.  So nobody can know for
certain.  But one thing we do know for certain, is that celebrity has the
power to make assholes of us all.  It's a fascinating phenomena, really, and
one that I think bears much more intellectual scrutiny than we usually give.
Much of Lila is centered upon this very issue.  I mean think about it,  Lila
didn't go to bed with the captain because he was a celebrity - in the world
Lila was from, intellectuals are not celebrities.  Movie stars, like Bob
Redford, those are the celebrities.  She ends up on that boat largely, on a
downward spiral from her normal standards.


I think it was the Buddha guy, who equated celebrity-dom with hell and I
agree, so why?   Why do so many of us  pursue it shamelessly and make a big
deal of it?  Is it like drinking, metaphysics and bar girls?  One of those
things we just can't resist?

More to come on this.

John