Re: virus: religion

Marie Foster (mfos@ieway.com)
Sat, 18 Apr 1998 06:39:13 -0700

I agree with you about the Jains. I am not so sure about native Americans. I
suppose I was affected early in my life by a book called "The Zen of Motorcycle
Maintenance". That and my study of 20th century physics is what I was
specifically referring to. We remain stuck with a Newtonian view of the world
yet. And we have not reconciled the new knowledge of the quantum to the extent
that we can divorce ourselves from our limited views of things.

It is almost the same analogy of being three dimensional in a universe of
potentially infinate dimensions. What amuses me is that each age of man has
felt himself at 'some kind of pinacle' of knowledge. And it is exactly that
arrogance that has mostly led to our downfall.

Or as I say, it is not what you know that causes communication problems, but
all the stuff you have not gotten around to.

Eric Boyd wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Marie Foster <mfos@ieway.com> wrote:
> > No, I kid you not... The more we think we know... the more
> > mystery we find attached to it. The older I get the more I
> > find this personally true. And if you read the greatest
> > thinkers closely, you will find they agree with me.
>
> Interesting. It certainly has not been my experience. Sometimes, you are
> right that when we get exposed to a new field, we suddenly discover that
> "why here is a whole *area* of knowledge I didn't even know existed!" I
> would maintain, of course, that the unknown doesn't actually grow when we
> find things like that. Infact, it shrinks, becuase now we at least know
> that we don't know!
>
> And as to great writers... the only one *I* can think of in this context is
> Mark Twain... who said that once he had the knowledge of how to sail a boat
> down a river (I think it was the Mississippi), the river had lost it's
> "magic" or "mystery" for him.
>
> You may have seen my own three fold description of the "pleasures" of
> knowledge... 1) Ignorance is bliss, 2) Knowledge destroys "happy"
> illusions, 3) Internalization -- where by knowledge brings enlightenment.
> I think that most of the population is happy in state one, that a sizable
> fraction of the people who go through our modern coersive education system
> end in state two (with a related hatred of knowledge and learning) and that
> state three represents the real goal of the sciences. (thus the change of
> orginization to "Religious Engineers inc.)
>
> On a related note, I think that the Indian concept of equating
> "enlightenment" to "omniscience" is probably correct. This can be seen
> most clearly amoung the Jain's.
>
> ERiC

--
Marie


Who in real life exists as


The Great Lady Casey, Citizen of Oasis, Sonoma Shard, Britannia