At 11:05 AM 3/19/99 -0800, KMO wrote:
>It only means that his faith is not of the simplistic formulation
>bandied about on this list. When you find yourself arguing that the Dali
>Lama has no faith in Buddhism because he is not wedded to every
>particular assertion that has worked its way into the Buddhist cannon,
>you might want to take that as an indication that your definition of
>faith needs some expanding.
>The word "dogma" is so heavily laden with negative associations that
>asking someone on this list "Why do insist on being dogmatic?" is about
>as likely to prompt someone to undertake a project of serious
>self-evaluation as asking "Why do you insist on being such an asshole?"
Sorry, I thought "dogmatic" was equivalent to "not on the table for examination". My mistake. I have no idea what you mean by "dogmatic".
>Do I strike you as someone who is dogmatic in his thinking? Does the
>fact that I'm not interested in re-evaluating my fundamental moral
>principles make me into an unthinking meme-bot?
When I asked the question I considered qualifying it with all kinds of disclaimers to prevent this sort of overreaction. But I thought, no, KMO of all people will give it a charitable reading. My mistake again.
>Someone can present me with a iron-clad logical argument to the that
>working counter to the expansion of consciousness will get me more
>money, pussy, fame, power, rhetorical finesse, and health, but that
>would, for me, be no argument in favor abandoning my axiom. Valuing
>consciousness, for me, is not a means to an end. There's no point in
>evaluating whether it's the best way to get me where I want to go. It's
>not where I'm going; it's who I am.
So would it be safe to say that losing that meme would change your fundamental identity? [disclaimer: I am not implying any sort of value judgement by this question, I am just curious and trying to understand what you're saying]
-- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/