[MD] Requiem for a Dream

[John Carl]

Sometimes it just takes so much effort to break free from a general sense
of hopelessness, that you can’t even move, you can’t even speak.  It’s all
in vane, there is nothing good that can be done.  It's a sad time, it goes
by many names.  "Stuckness" is an excellent term.  Writer's Block it is
often called, depression, is a clinical term.  The non-output of a person.
It stems from a condition of hopelessness in the face of overwhelming odds.

This is suffering, and it happens over and over in human affairs, but it
can be in fact, a friend.  We tend to forget that with our "cures".
People think of suffering as the enemy, but suffering tells us when
something is very, very wrong, and a it takes a genius to grasp the
suffering of an entire generation:  Robert M. Pirsig was that kind of
genius and he  grasped our social suffering better than any other modern
thinker.

Now when I say "better", I don't mean comprehensively.  I mean there were
purer logicians and more well-educated minds than his, grappling with these
things on a high-falutin' academic level that most of us couldn't really
relate to, but for RMP, it was a personal journey.  A personal testimony,
that hooked up with the dreams and aspirations of more than one generation
of a certain cross-section of society.  We'll call them, for lack of a
better term, "the carers".  People who were given sound metaphysical
reasons for giving a shit.  Which for some reason,  all of the educational
system and dominant paradigm had failed to impart.

Caring was a verboten subject  - you cared about what WE the authorities
determine you should care about.  Scientific truth being at the top of our
list, but if you want to care about some particular religion, that's your
business.   Learn that on your own time.

That is what one generation suffered under.  The next (and maybe
subsequent?) suffered under a whole different set of problems, the "it's
all relative" problems which make decision-making impossible and leads to a
nihilistic hedonism that moves society backwards rather than forwards.

Quality is real.  More real than any substance.  What an insight!  Even if
it was derived, as one friend of mine insists, from Whitehead, it was real
and it was told in a way that I could understand, without paying for a
hugely expensive university education, but a paperback book for 2.97 or .25
in a used book store.  No wonder the academy hates him.  And always will.
Here was artfully told, the underlying truth of our existence, without
having to jump through any

His story was underived.   He walked that lonesome valley for himself.  He
wasn’t a dependent upon any particular school of thought, as a whole, he
was just a very smart man trying to deal with an insane paradigm.  And when
he found out about caring, and how it’d been wiped from the earth by this
insane death-force, he fought it by caring. Caring about people, caring
about his art.

Caring is a tricky business.
Caring and suffering are synonymous,
But you can’t avoid it by hiding or staying away.  god knows, I’ve tried.
It’s an infection on the cosmos in the same way as life is an infection on
the cosmos.

And yet… even with all this caring and art and beautiful thinking, it all
comes to nothing in the end.  Caring is easily subverted.

Everybody cares;  the problem is ego -  the driving force behind the modern
era, that narrow social self  the social-climbing,  academically-rising,
philosopher that thinks mere academic might makes right.   Never mind logic
or quality of thought or insight.  That is the world we live in as I and
Bob both have found out over and over and over.  It's a persisting pattern
that Pirsig, while  critiquing  profoundly,  did  little to alter or
change..  Certain cliques just become stronger, the more you attack them.
It’s an impossible situation.  At least in my experience.

 You cannot  deny society it’s Trump card.  The buffoons win.  I  get
that.  I have for some time.  Nuthin we can do about it really.  Ok

pause for a tear to splash my keyboard.

But fuck that anyway.  Robert M. Pirsig set MY thought free, and it will
never be captured by any stupid system or authority again.  For that, I owe
him my life.

For the rest of you all, have a nice ride, suckers as this roller coaster
goes into freefall-

jc

PS:  Shout out to gav, my brother, wherever you are.  Sorry dude, I tried
for a while, then I quit.