Zhuangzi: So Shen, before your uninvited appearance, Scott was talking about leaving all our ancient blabber behind and putting what he has learned into his own words.
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Shen Dao: Hasn’t he done that already? It seems to me that he often goes beyond what you actually taught.
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Scott: I have in part; but it’s still my interpretation of Zhuangzi—whether correct or not—and it’s still anchored to his philosophy. I tend to justify what I say by way of reference to what he said; as if he were the authority.
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Shen Dao: And why do you feel this need to leave Zhuang behind?
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Scott: Well, mostly I think it’s because I need to blabber and I’ve pretty much exhausted what I can think to say about Zhuangzi. That’s a confession, by the way. Why I need to blabber is another question altogether. And Zhuangzi and I decided that some such project is pretty much unavoidable. I could theoretically collect stamps as an alternative, but that doesn’t satisfy my hunger in the same way. I can’t make it meaningful, as I tend to do with my blabbering.
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Zz: We decided that some kind of project that deals with our core emptiness is required. But since we have identified that emptiness, and have come to realize that it is unfillable, we need a project that fills it by not filling it. Stamp collecting, just tries to fill it and requires a myopic awareness of our actual human condition. Philosophizing can actually take it by the horns and make use of it—make use of the useless.
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Scott: We can take the bull by the horns as the Minoans did, and flip upon its back—take it for a ride. We can turn it into play.
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Zz: Play that knows it’s play. Play that knows it’s play is play that doesn’t take itself so seriously as to destroy all the fun.
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Shen Dao: So can’t collecting stamps—whatever they are—be done in the spirit of play?
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Scott: It can; but the spirit of play is something that is nurtured philosophically—so one would need to collect stamps philosophically. And I just might—not collect stamps, but something equivalent—which is pretty much everything we do.
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Zz: What are we doing now if not playing the game of philosophizing about philosophizing? We are philosophizing philosophically. We see its equivalence to stamp-collecting and play it as such.
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Scott: Philosophizing philosophically is maintaining a kind of transcendence, and that, I think, is what enables Zhuangzi’s free and unfettered wandering.