Today's discussion question

[Ian Livingston]

Well, I still wouldn't dare speak for P, but, parsing the statement just a
little, I will speak for myself, as someone undoubtedly influenced by
Pynchon rightly and wrongly by turns.

I have had the great displeasure of running afoul Westerners in Buddhist
robes. These people who go bowing to the East in the certainty that they
will attain enlightenment through Eastern teachings take with them all the
shit they already believe, all the bunk they have learned in school, and
all their prejudices and try to shoehorn those into teachings from sages
who had no relation to the world we live in. They're like Cinderella's
step-sisters but that they go on believing that they are wearing the glass
slipper that never fit on their foot in the first place. The whole delusion
results in comically tormented psyches. It's a lot like the people in the
big Bible-thumping cults calling themselves Christians. They are ruled by
their own Shadows, living in darkness that wastes the good any of them
might accomplish in the world.


On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 8:47 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Mencken was, as is the average western philosopher, satirist, pundit,
> blogger, spirit-hungry westerner...what have you, ignorant of the
> traditions of Eastern philosophy, religion, literature, art. But given the
> global problems we face, the urgency of many of these problems, climate
> change and population growth and depletion of the planet are three that are
> obvious, it seems foolish to ridicule those who would seriously turn to the
> East, if not for solutions or wisdom, for insights into how East and West
> may find common ground. This is not likely to succeed if the West continues
> to insist that all that science and math can not take the measure of is
> superstitious nonsense, Emersonian naked eyeball transparencies that once
> viewed through the superior lens of science are stripped of the rose and
> under the rose colorings of the observer and made black and white zeros and
> ones. Mencken is a good tonic for the youthful longings of those who
> read Herman Hesse, who fail to heed the wit of Voltaire, who live in what
> most would call the best of all possible worlds, and who run fast from the
> magic of their own traditions and into the trappings of ones they can never
> begin to make meaningful. But his scientism is now endemic and allied with
> a haughty exceptionalism. A little humility is called for. The planets can
> not be charmed from the sky. We must observe them with our feet on the
> ground, but what Galileo teaches us about what moves, and what moves, may
> be better appreciated if we treat the ancient wisdoms with more respect
> than the great man was given by the sages who grilled him (though not
> literally). The East is hungry for Western ideas, culture, philosophy,
> science, literature, art. The exchange is promising. But why march in with
> the scientific method, our new cross?
>
> On Monday, August 12, 2013, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>>   *HL Mencken @HLMenckenBot *2h<http://us-mg4.mail.yahoo.com/HLMenckenBot/status/366484217795846145>
>> One of the strangest delusions of the Western mind is to the effect that
>> a philosophy of profound wisdom is on tap in the East // @*laotzunit*<http://us-mg4.mail.yahoo.com/LaoTzunit>
>>
>> Anyone think TRP believes this?
>>
>
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