[MD] [Bulk] Re: empathy

[david buchanan]

Andre said to Marsha;
I apologize immediately Marsha because I do think you are genuinely upset but, for goodness sake let your experience inform your theory with consistency. Static patterns as ever-changing makes them frivolous and illusory. This may have been the conviction of the Indian professor at Benares University answering Phaedrus' query about the reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but Pirsig's MOQ is of a different quality.


dmb says:
Yes, it's only normal to feel bad for northeastern Japan and there's no crime in saying so out loud either.

But if desire is an ego-building illusion and static patterns are ever-changing, then what does that say about the desire of the Japanese quake victims to live? What does that say about the static patterns that are melting down in the cores of those reactors? Is that just an illusion? Are the coastal residents just ego maniacs because they desire food, water and a warm place to sleep tonight? Is the loss of 10,000 lives (so far) just an illusion. Is it just a form of absolutism if we insist these events cannot rightly be interpreted as a good thing?

It's bad enough that Marsha's picture of the MOQ is predicated on a whole bunch of mixed up definitions and confused ideas, but the otherworldly and misanthropic nature of this vision makes it even worse. I think this vacuous nihilism is approximately the opposite the of MOQ.