I wanted to toss this out for discussion.
Over in another thread I've been trying to formulate
something like a "Basic Peat Diet"
or a "Strict Peat Diet" or an "Accurate Peat Diet"
or a "Peat Derived Diet."
I think it's worth noting, even before getting down (in that other thread)
to the nuts and bolts of sifting through Peat's many diet-related statements,
that one runs into significant resistance from many Peat fans
for reasons I will label "intellectual."
Many Peat fans simply don't want Peat to be interpreted clearly--that is seen as a danger.
Why is that?
I wanted here to analyze and summarize a couple of those common resistances:
1. There are the interpreters who emphasize Peat's perceived ambiguity, relativism, or mysticism:
"The Peat that Can Be Spoken is Not The True Peat."
I'm riffing there on the famous line from Lao Tzu,
"the Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao."
Because Peat makes so many statements
advocating humility and condemning arrogant-but-stupid authority,
many like to make Peat into a mystic or a relativist:
"Context is Everything" becomes "Nothing Can Be Known with Any Clarity."
Many Peat fans ape his humble, anti-authoritarian comments and attitude
and see as a threat
efforts to make clear interpretations of his work.
If clear statements and generalizations are disallowed,
PeatLand becomes a vast grayzone.
From there it is a but short leap to being able to claim
that just about anything is a "Peat Diet."
Some even consider the term itself blasphemous
(because a "Peat Diet which can be spoken is not a true Peat Diet").
2. Peat as Rorschach:
have you ever fallen in love with the music of a very obscure band?
If so, have you noticed how that music sort of becomes Your Music,
by virtue of the fact that the music is so rare?
And have you noticed how you loathe any notion that that music, that band,
might become popular or mainstream?
I think this happens with many Peat lovers:
he becomes our own, private, cryptic, obscure TruthSayer.
Our identification with him reinforces our own reality--
as long as he remains rare and obscure, so do we!
We might struggle if Peat came out with a mainstream book,
available to common understandings.
He would cease to be our own private province.
He would no longer be rare, and thus would we also.
We would become common.
Over in another thread I've been trying to formulate
something like a "Basic Peat Diet"
or a "Strict Peat Diet" or an "Accurate Peat Diet"
or a "Peat Derived Diet."
I think it's worth noting, even before getting down (in that other thread)
to the nuts and bolts of sifting through Peat's many diet-related statements,
that one runs into significant resistance from many Peat fans
for reasons I will label "intellectual."
Many Peat fans simply don't want Peat to be interpreted clearly--that is seen as a danger.
Why is that?
I wanted here to analyze and summarize a couple of those common resistances:
1. There are the interpreters who emphasize Peat's perceived ambiguity, relativism, or mysticism:
"The Peat that Can Be Spoken is Not The True Peat."
I'm riffing there on the famous line from Lao Tzu,
"the Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao."
Because Peat makes so many statements
advocating humility and condemning arrogant-but-stupid authority,
many like to make Peat into a mystic or a relativist:
"Context is Everything" becomes "Nothing Can Be Known with Any Clarity."
Many Peat fans ape his humble, anti-authoritarian comments and attitude
and see as a threat
efforts to make clear interpretations of his work.
If clear statements and generalizations are disallowed,
PeatLand becomes a vast grayzone.
From there it is a but short leap to being able to claim
that just about anything is a "Peat Diet."
Some even consider the term itself blasphemous
(because a "Peat Diet which can be spoken is not a true Peat Diet").
2. Peat as Rorschach:
have you ever fallen in love with the music of a very obscure band?
If so, have you noticed how that music sort of becomes Your Music,
by virtue of the fact that the music is so rare?
And have you noticed how you loathe any notion that that music, that band,
might become popular or mainstream?
I think this happens with many Peat lovers:
he becomes our own, private, cryptic, obscure TruthSayer.
Our identification with him reinforces our own reality--
as long as he remains rare and obscure, so do we!
We might struggle if Peat came out with a mainstream book,
available to common understandings.
He would cease to be our own private province.
He would no longer be rare, and thus would we also.
We would become common.