 
To: BLUECANARYINNAOUTLET 
Cc: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@ANDREW.CMU.EDU
Subject: Enlightenment for Institutions (was Re: Tai Chi, etc.)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 29 May 93 11:19:00 EST."
             <01GYQUVFTUGW000107@YANG.EARLHAM.EDU> 
Date: Sun, 30 May 93 23:56:38 -0400
Message-Id: <12825.738820598@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Thomas_Price@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU

This'll eventually get around to being on-topic for the list. Hope that's
okay with everyone.

>   Well, y'know, the stuff about how what you're doing is "moving chi 
>around", "chi" being supposedly this invisible energy stuff which emanates 
>from your stomach and has the power to do all kinds of mysterious stuff.  
>And many other such skiffy propositions.
>   Translation for skeptics: it's not the meat, it's the motion. :-)

First comment: "Skiffy" ... my new word with that use is "wifty". I was
only recently taught it!

Second: I'm a Skeptic -- a Pyrhonnian Skeptic. Greek skepticism (associated
mostly with Pyrrho of Athens) is moral, in contrast to western skepticism
which is a scientific methodology and began with Descartes. Pyrrho
(in a tiny tiny nutshell) said that no correct statements whatsoever
can be made, therefore we should be mellow about pretty much everything.
("There are no answers because there are no questions"; Marcel Duchamp's
summary.) So, for me, this business about chi moving around is perfectly
legitimate, simpleminded phenomenology: that point in the stomach is the
geometric center of the nervous system, which is our system of information
(and correspondingly, of coutrol) and we experience the feeling of control
moving throughout the body in little wavefronts. Or, put another way,
there's this energy stuff moving around and it can do things. That's cool
with me too, as legitimate as gravity. It's important to note that the 
legitimacy of such conceptualization for me springs directly from my 
skepticism. 

I'm sure this seems nihilistic, as if to say "anything goes", but 
transcendental psychology comes into play. Nothing can be said about the 
ego either, and if one pushes this far enough he will realize that his
own identity is a fiction, not to be taken very seriously. (jeez, where
have I heard this sort of thing before?) His desires tend to become
rather teleological: food to eat, a place to stay, and stories to tell --
that being what humans are good for. So if someone were to say "'; "In tai Chi there's this energy stuff moving around";
"", and then ask a Pyrhonnian Skeptic which is
most accurate, he would have to say "all of them." But if that person
began to act on any of them, in the third case the Skeptic would have
to say "hey, what's your problem? What on earth is motivating you to
act like that?" 'Cos there's no excuse. 

This is what I think that Enlightenment (the Third-Most Baggage-Laden
word in English, after "God" and "love" -- not to be confused with 
the category of Most Misused (that would be "mystical")) is all about:
coming to grips with the absence of objective referentiality, and the
consequent absence of personal identity. If you've followed me so far,
the question arises: we can think of a corporation as an organism. What
would an Enlightened corporation look like?

(Interlude: Highlight of Conversation With Jon. In the East, "desire
is the cause of all suffering." Siddartha Buddha. In the West, it's 
Scarcity. Genesis 3:17. That subtle difference explains an awful lot.)

An Enlightened corporation would look like ... successful anarchy. It 
would have no inertia, no "corporate culture", no internalized goals 
such as self-preservation. It would be focused entirely on the task
at hand and would dissolve once it had accomplished that task. It 
would be "at one with the Universe" (a skiffy, wifty phrase) or, in
other words, indistinguishable from its society.

Startling historical example: the Viet Cong!! Close in a lot of ways.

[preachy bit deleted, although it did contain the nice phrase "junkyard dogma"]

      Tom Price   |    tp0x@cs.cmu.edu   |   Free will? What free will? 
 *****************************************************************************
  plutoniumsurveillanceterroristCIAassassinationIranContrawirefraudcryptology



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