++> Response to (sort of) inquiry from Day Brown to
 ++> D. Martorana on "Value Measures"
 
 DB> On 12-29-97 David Martorana wrote to Frank Masingill...
 DB> Been fun reading you and frank on this stuff, and just when
 DB> frank was gonna spell it out clearly he said...
 DB> dialogue aL+nD+ or something like that, and he lost me.
 
     That dialog was long and tuned its way through a lot of
     material i.e. "Aboutness", the transient circumstance of
     questionable consciousness, Chardin, mind candy, the NIHIL
     etc.......etc. This was in addition to a host of items Frank
     touched on. "Value measures" covers the whole bit of it all,
     reaching some best expression in liberal civil-ish confrontation.
 
 DB> But I was wondering about the separation we place between
 DB> visions of history, and our vision of our *own* history.
 DB> I have stumbled across one author or another, and am always
 DB> happy when some point helps me integrate a number of disparate
 DB> factoids into some sort of system.
 
   Visions of history are perhaps just millions of our *own*
   little histories all "mushed" together. Comfortable systems
   (that make us happy librarians) can mask and herd us into
   sameness-almost-wrongs ........Yes!
   I suspect that like our sex system being designed to serve a
   purpose, our intellect is also lavished upon by "other" agendas.
   .....that we serve and die before we ever find out why. This
   near 2/3 positive - 1/3 negative packaging, prevents our thinking
   clear about the "ABOUT"  and represents the mostly contrived
   *thinkings* that pervade our philosophies and literatures-
   Apparently also the needs of nature being played out on Her
   stage and Her coice of music.
 
 DB> Likewise, in conversation, some new way of interpreting an event
 DB> actually witnessed ripples through my memory when it is harmonic
 DB> with other systems of thought I already have, and those that lack
 DB> that harmony, I tend to discard rapidly lest I disorder a system
 DB> of thinking I had gotten used to, just as I do with a viewpoint
 DB> of history.
 
  As said, intellectual comfort sometimes helps index our visions-
  but can oft and also hinder. If one is blessed by the fates (or
  cursed by the furies), circumstance often slips in to dictate what
  will be allowed to bend views. I find there are too many time honored
  notions that serve to sweeten awkward truths.
 
 DB> In either case, it is possible that some new perspective could be
 DB> so fundamental as to create a Zen sense of enlightenment beyond
 DB> the usual array of adaptive integration of new threads.  There is
 DB> a fear in the study of philosophy that it's habit of exposing all
 DB> the tension of habitual double think, and a cascade into chaos of
 DB> unrelated threads if one of these overstressed lines of thinking
 DB> should be severed.  I will be either miserable, or ecstactic.
 
   Miserable or ecstatic Zen. .......Now that's new to me!
                                                    ^^^^^
   I often walk what I perceive the narrow, so as not to disturb
   what I also perceive to be "popular thought". Several times I've
   overstepped that badly lit boundary and been rewarded by some lack
   of posted responses . My recent findings, that I had some old
   sophist Greeks lean forward to somewhat agree with me, was my first
   indication that I wasn't alone. Gorgias, a fellow Sicilian from
   the old days (very old), though thoroughly put down by such bright
   candles as Plato, kinda' favors my own darkish thoughts. Though
   most of his works have been lost, enough quotations and historical
   comments have survived to make me less lonely .
 
   Being essentially "relativist" (circumstance manufactures
   importance) with a strong inkling that man is *_NOT_* THE
   center of meaning, I have to work at harmonizing into main-
   stream thinking without projecting a God into that center
   of meaning .....not an easy recipe to bake out. And simple logic
   would have it that if you must die, nothing has meaning, unless
   you play poetry or a religion card ...and that has no justifiable
   basis .............and so ???????????????????????????????????????
                                       .____.
                                        \__/
    It is nice when we can' light       /oo\> .. Dave
    candles .....even when we find     | ||
    later that the wicks have known      ||
    other flames ................!      _||_
 
--- Maximus/2 3.01
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