Dear David B.,
We still seem to disagree what myths can learn us about the social level. I
hold that myths are primitive intellectual patterns of values, you seem to
see them as social patterns of values. But aren't myths sets of ideas and
sets of ideas intellectual patterns of values?
Yes, 'myths tell us ... much more than any bones or ashes ever will and
these myths are still available for analysis.' But they are not telling us
anything directly about the social patterns of values of their times. They
are representations of social patterns of values as intellectual patterns of
values are always contain ideas about the social patterns of values from
which they originated. To learn something about pure social patterns of
values, we have to go back to the times when there were no intellectual
patterns of values around to confuse matters. I had the impression that you
agreed with dating those times back to more than 50.000 or 100.000 years
ago.
Pirsig recommends 'The Masks of God' in 'Lila' ch.32 with 'You could
discover a lot about a culture by what it said about its idols. The idols
would be an objectification of the culture's innermost values, which were
its reality.'
I interpret 'culture' in this context not as a social pattern of values, but
as an intellectual pattern of values. I think my interpretation is
consistent with Pirsig's ideas even if he is not very clear about the
distinction between social and intellectual patterns of values. I hope you
agree however, that ideas don't have to be consistent with Pirsig's ideas.
We should try to improve on what he published 11 years ago, shouldn't we?
My idea that the battle you and Pirsig describe as a 'battle between social
and intellectual values' can better be described as a battle between higher
and lower quality intellectual values among themselves follows from our
apparently different ideas about what constitutes the social level. When you
started the '3rd level blues'-thread I thought we had more agreement, but
that seems to have been a mistake.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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