Hey Rod: I have just a few words in response.
ROD...
OK SOM ( subject-object metaphysics?) and the MOQ ,are derived from the
eastern/ western split instigated by plato... so far so good!
DMB...
Um, well, I think its more complicated than that. But its true that Plato
stands at an important fork in the road. He was among the last thinkers that
could have taken it either way. The underground (mystical) currents of
culture that I pointed to as the source of the MOQ was taken up later by the
neo-Platonists, among others, but he is also considered to be the main
representative of that above-ground current too. Who said that all of
Western philosophy was merely a footnote to Plato? Anyway, the oldest idea
goes way, way back before all that. As you get at here...
ROD...
But if this is so, then the origins of the MOQ are older than the origins of
SOM... correct!! So the SOM evolved from a need to break away from the
eastern mystical view of the world.
DMB...
Yes. I think you're really onto something. It seems that SOM, which is
derived from the outward looking, star gazing, exploration loving
patriarchal warrior culture, represents a necessary historical project. But
I'd like to suggest that the West had its own kind of mysticism. Its true
than India had a different sort of mysticism of its own, as well as a
warrior culture of its own. It wasn't so very different from the ancient
Greeks, who were Indo-Europeans as well. So the great project of SOMish
horse cultures wasn't to break away from the east, but to conquer the
goddess worshipers. And there are matters of degree in this. Notice that the
Semitic religions exclude female divinity figures almost completely while
the Aryan religions retained godesses in their pantheon. There they had
absorbed the older culture in same kind of way that Europeans have absorbed
Indian culture in America.
ROD...
Let's remember that ALL humankind followed a path, literally, that started
in the plains of africa, then migrating towards the east across what is now
the arabian gulf, into india ( the birthplace of all religion ), by the time
men reached india, we had apparently developed enough socially to evoke
religious thoughts, early mysticism.
DMB...
India is the birthplace of all religion? I think you give her too much
credit. Shamanism, which is a primary kind of tribal mysticism, is a
compotent of all primitive societies on all the continents. Every subsequent
religion developed out of that. That's what Campbell and others say.
ROD...
Basically for me it says our whole culture originates from a group of
outcasts.. and this is not a great place to start, maybe this si why the MOQ
has had such a hard time!!! And it is to eastern mysticism and the roots of
eastern religion, in sanskrit where all the answers lie.
DMB...
Sanskrit is an off shoot of the "original" proto-indo-european language, and
so is Greek and English. Pirsig goes there to "go even further back into the
mythos than Homer." P 378 He's digging into our own culture by his
examinations of Sanskrit. He uses it to investigate the evolution of that
horse culture that invaded both Greece and India. You know, some of them
went south to India and some went west to European. Thus the name
"indo-european".
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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