is there a right and wrong

[Artguy]

As my dear ol dad use to say ...Ya there's a right and wrong...I'm right and your wrong....

[stilltrucking]

Yeah I remember hearing a driver talking about his sixteen-year-old son. "I keep telling him now is the time to go out and face the world while he still knows everything."

Watching a big truck thread true traffic intimidating one car after another. Ride up on the car's bumper until the car changed lanes and give him another ten feet of open road. Then he goes and rides the next cars bumper. A truck in Maryland killed three people like that they tried him for murder. Another one l like is you are driving along and you come to a hill. The truck in front of you is slowing down as it pulls the hill. So you go around him and get in front. The truck tops the hill and starts rolling down. He gains speed and passes you. Ok, now the next hill same thing happens. He tops it and passes you because he wants to 80 MPH and you are only going 65. But this time he gets in front of you and slams on his breaks to teach you a lesson. I knew a guy in Texas that had a truck do that to him a couple times. The last time my friend took his browning shot gun off the rack and laid it out the passenger window as he went by the truck. No problem after that. I would bet that the most unread book in the United States is Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A book full of good intentions of the fifty billion people who have bought a copy and the five or six people who have actually read it. I had a book called Zen and the Art of Driving that should be part of every high school student drivers program. How to control the flow of traffic, to keep the cars around you flowing in harmony.

Artman:
one unrelated note, the color white has one emotion connected to me and that is fear. Have you ever found yourself in a white out? One hell of a feeling, no idea if you will be seeing a lot of red in the next heart beat. Every thing white, no idea what is in front of you, no idea if the road is curving, you can't stop because you don't know what is coming up behind you. I like that post to creative a lot. Made a lot of good points. The bushman who grows up in the jungle no sense of distance, if you put him on a hill top where he can see for miles his depth perception is fucked. We are born in square rooms, city blocks, and every thing we see is about right angles. The people born in round huts how do they see the world?
I suppose that is what Zen is about, getting back to the source that mind at the moment of of conception? The moment of birth, not sure what to call it.

Atit
In the old days every mom and pop truck stop used to sell BB's. I could never figure out why. Then an old timer told me it was for the four wheelers that followed you for miles with their bright lights shinning right into your mirrors. You poured them out the windows and eighteen wheels picked them up an threw them into the guys head lights. Instant relief, instant darkness. I know one driver named Wild Bill who threw a big wrench out the window at a car. Busted the guys jaw. Ok ok I wont preach at you no more.

[K&D]

alright, on my way back this christmas, i'll be more carefull.

[stilltrucking]

You are doing fine, I am a compuslive worrier, don't u start worrying too. I tell another thing that scares me is the "bob tails" the tractors with out the trailers, if you see one of those blow by you about seventy watch out. THe guy is clueless. They can't stop. They bounce, slide, and spin out. Nothing to hold them down. Especially in the rain.

Riding in a car just ain't the same, something about the throbbing sound of a big diesel that almost sounds like the Aummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Happy motoring.

[K&D]

i think this laborday, because it doesn't look like the crawford thing will still be there, were going to visit, whitesands, carlsbad and roswell NM, theres not a single person on those roads....ever. maybe a few in roswell.

[stilltrucking]

, It is a great ride. How fortunate I felt as a kid from a gritty east coast to see that desert. Going up towards Carlsbad from El Paso. can't remember the road number but the scenery was so beautiful, only Mnaz could do it justice. I never realized how fast a snake could move. They would shoot across the road like lightning. I remember my first trucking a partner a Texan warning me (the green horn from back east). to be careful when I got out of the truck. Look down and see where you are stepping. Rattlesnake country. Dam there I go again Enjoy

[microbe]

one unrelated note, the color white has one emotion connected to me and that is fear

I've just finished reading Moby Dick and there is an extensive passage in there that relates white things with fearful situations and creatures. It was interesting to see your comment, having just read that passage.

This is my first post on this forum - hope you don't mind me butting in.
BTW - I am one of the half dozen who have read ZATAOMM. Its a quality book!

[e_dog]

this is sage advice:

Sure, we are born with some senses, but not morality. We learn our morals from our environment. We absorb the values of our parents even before we can speak. Further values are settled upon us from school and church and television.

But the values that you end up with would best be those of your own choosing, the ones you settle on for yourself because you have thought out the reasons for them.

Take the Golden Rule for example. It is easy to see the simple truth and logic of Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You. Even though you didn't invent it, if you see the sense in it and adopt it as your own, then it's your value.

All I am saying is question all values and verify them as your own before you live by them.

the comments, revisions:
the source of values are always social AND innate. we are born with a capacity to be moral, which is to say we are born with a capacity to empathize with others and think. with the proper experiences and training we develop an ability to act and think morally. this processncan of course go wrong at many junctures.

there are a class of things which are clearly right and a class of things that are clearly wrong. in the middle is everything else. (unlike doreen, i don't think stealing can be classed as inherently evil, as murder is.) the bulk of our choices seem to be within this ambiguous middle realm unless faced with 'extreme' situations like warfare or totalitarianism, which can mean that every actions is charged with difficult ethical consequences; these extreme situations don't make things easier; the ambiguity of action is simple replaced by conflict of consideration.

[stilltrucking]

Microbe,

Man I wish you would butt in more often. Something happening to me right now. Some kind of aha moment. Got up walking around sit down read some more get up walking around. Thirty years since I first read The Birth of Tragedy and The Geneolagy of Morals. Just found ZATOM on the internet

http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Qualit ... rword.html

I have finished the Afterward. And the first couple of paragraphs of Part I just grabbed me. I may actually read it. Never thought I could dig it. Never thought I was smart enough to understand. One those intellectuals on another site described it in terms that seemed way over my head.

Going to get back to you but just trying to leave a bookmark in this conversation for myself. One of the things that struck me about Nietzsche was his statement that he was "writting a history of the future"


From ZATOM
This book has a lot to say about Ancient Greek perspectives and their meaning but there is one perspective it misses. That is their view of time. They saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before their eyes.
When you think about it, that's a more accurate metaphor than our present one. Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?

Dam I can't thank you enough for butting in. I would love to buy
you a cup of tea sometime. If you don't mind tea bags.


Nietzsche, Zen and Sudden Enlightenment.
something just clicked

[microbe]

Dam I can't thank you enough for butting in. I would love to buy
you a cup of tea sometime. If you don't mind tea bags.

I love tea in all its forms - bags and all. I especially like having it bought for me! Anytime you like - I'll provide the thirst.

Its a long time since I read ZATAOMM but as I remember it the gist was/is - ditch the ego. We are all part of a whole which is so much more than each of us but we are all important nonetheless. If that makes sense. Relax and be good to yourself is also what I got from it!

[stilltrucking]

I had a friend from Wales who used to call tea bags an abomination.

Don't want to talk this away. Hope you are going to check in to S8 once in a while. Great place.


btw
I only read the first volume of English Speaking People. What a bloody history those little islands of yours have had.


talk at you later I hope.
jack