MoQ Discussion of “The Giant”

Here is a message snipped from the MoQ archives:

Heather Perella spiritualadirondack at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 2 11:50:38 PST 2006

Thanks Khaled,
[Khaled]
Also those who do think, give up when they can’t get any action to follow their critical thinking.

This is a most excellent simple point. This probably encapsulates the intellectual level discerning the social level, Pirsig’s moral path, most completely. The haunting of this culture: to break the minds of the people, so, their will-power will break, too. As Arlo so well stated the borg will assimilate. As gav has pointed out using Pirsig terminology, the giant is here. The giant will eat and spit out the organs of our own thougths, unless, we are able to join this world. The SOM personality removes us from this world, thus, slowly, ever-so-slowly the haunting terrorizes our minds and will-power breaking it into pieces, making us think solid boundaries exist and we can not care and change ‘things’. Thus, this forced illusion haunts us away from wanting to care and change anything the will may break, or become tired and worn out. The spirit must stay strong as this culture removes so much from our minds and hands as we are taught to believe that an Other exists and we are not the Other. The senselessness that abounds may make us believe so much is ‘out-of-our-hands’. This, by the way, is how the local geography is oversighted by the complexity of the larger geography of nation-state with a SOM mentality. A?

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I think there is a lot to say about the effect of “the giant” concept mentioned in “Lila”, and the message above really digs into the situation well.

I think the current “giant”, the momentum of our culture based upon an SOM-based ideology, provides the leverage that “removes us from this world”. We’re participating in a culture that encourages us to focus on The Other (objects and subjects distinct from “us”) first and foremost, in an effort to add to or at least maintain the strength of “the giant”. The Other is a myth
of SOM and “self” a concept that fractures our experience of reality because we think of ourselves as separate from reality. We are quite obviously part of reality – how could we exist if we are not part of it?

In a non SOM-based culture, the detachment and the power of the “self” concept fade into the background. The “giant” of such cultures is fundamentally less-scary from a MoQ perspective, as it encourages (or at least doesn’t DIScourage) a connected, inclusive, participative reality. People become a part of what they do, see value in their actions, and care about all that happens. Empirical subject-object transcendence, such as the fine craft of Pirsig’s unorthodox welder in ZMM, are not seen as special and rare events because the values of the culture embody connectedness.

This sort of talk is dead-obvious to so many cultures, but it’s a real pain in the ass for most western-thinkers to grasp.