Wim: thanks for the kind words. Some response to your points follow..
Wim said...
I don't like to describe this origin of intellectual patterns of
values (dated back by Pirsig 'maybe fifty or one hundred thousand years'
according to your quote from 'Lila' p386 of 23/2 16:51 -0700) as a 'battle
between social and intellectual values'. I don't think that intellectual
patterns of values were sufficiently independent from social patterns of
values so short after their 'birth' to 'fight' their parent level. They
rather gained their independence by being of use to social patterns of
values: a social pattern of values with an intellectual extra was more
succesful than a social pattern of values without.
DMB...
We agree that the battle between social and intellectual values is a recent
development. In fact, its still going on. If I gave you any other impression
it was unintended.
Wim...
In order to carefully examine the social level, I think we should start much
earlier, in the era in which it had not given birth yet to intellectual
patterns of values: the period between the split-off of early humans from
their non-human roots (from the ancestors they share with chimps) and the
moment when homo sapiens created 'this ritual-cosmos relationship' that
Pirsig describes.
DMB...
That would be nice, but when we go back much more than 5,000 years there
just isn't much to go on. The cultural streams Campbell describes are about
as far back as we can go with anything like certainty. We can look at
comtemporary primative cultures for a glimpse of what the world was once
like, but even that involves too much guess work. However, as I mentioned
before, the myth of Orpheus refers back to primative shamanism and according
to an Oxford encyclopedia "elements of that myth may even pre-date the human
species itself". Myths have a certain way of preserving history. We can see
the old goddess cultures within the Greek pantheon, for example. One can
sometimes see layers of culture within the myths, but its no easy task to
unravel all that. I'll try to come up with some more of that very ancient
myth of Orpheus for our discussions here. That won't be easy either.
ROD...
The discussion in the 'Principles'-thread about the 'moral principle' that
describes the lowest level of Dynamic Quality that is secured by the social
level refers to that (earlier) period. Do you think that 'social interaction
and working together and roles and status and division of labor' AND
'preservation of practices that prove to work' is a too superficial
description of the social level IN THAT PERIOD?
DMB...
Honestly don't know what you mean by "the lowest level of DQ". As I
understand it, DQ does not have levels. Levels are used only to distinguish
static quality, no? As to the question of superficiality, yes, the
examination of material culture does little to get at the innermost values
and the meaning of the mythos no matter how far back we go. Any SOMer or
Marxist can do that. We need to know what they were thinking and what they
believed much more than what they did this or that tool. We need to know why
more than we need to know. what.
Thanks,
DMB
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