Dear Rog,
You write:
>PS -- Bard, I appreciate your support and agree with most of what you wrote,
>but your trust of "the natural goodness" of the human soul is 180 degrees
>from Pirsig or from any scientific study on the brutality of primates and
>man. Platt will undoubtedly give the quotes to show how contrary this view is
>to Pirsig, but it isn't a minor misinterpretation, it is a DOOSY! (remember
>the paragraph on pre-social cannibalism, torture and smashing baby heads?)
While I have agreed with most of what you have written in this thread, I fear that you have fallen into an intellectual trap with this one, as has Pirsig, as I have in the past, as all of us have at one time or another. We tend as "civilized humans" to confuse primitive "history" with man's nature. This is tantamount to future generations judging our nature by viewing videotapes of our evening news. We see the results of prior generation's destructiveness, greed, persecution, barbarianism because destruction always leaves artifacts. But I would argue that we should not judge our ancestor's nature, ergo our own, by the small percentage of humans who engaged in cannibalism and torture when the majority most probably, given the success of our species, lived in peace and harmony, leaving more subtle historical tracks. "Zen" is the first word in the title of Pirsig's first book. Let's not forget that the Zen approach is that an object (e.g. historical artifact) is defined only by the space (e.g. lack of historical artifacts) that surrounds it.
Always,
The Bard
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