From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Aug 28 2004 - 18:20:31 BST
Wim, DM and all MOQers:
Wim Nusselder said:
How to decrease the difference between ideal and reality? ...In order to
answer this question we still have to answer the questions how 3rd level
patterns of value maintain societies and how they evolve, i.e. how DQ
operates at the 3rd level.
A few pages from the end of Lila, Pirsig writes:
"Anthropologists could do a lot with idols. Maybe they already had. He
seemed to remember a book he'd always wanted to read called THE MASKS OF
GOD. 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."
dmb says:
Actually, the author of THE MASKS OF GOD is a mythologist, not an
anthropologist, and the title refers to a four volume set. In any case,
Pirsig has offer excellent advice here. Joseph Campbell's books trace the
evolution of human culture from its most primitive to the cutting edge
artists of the twentieth century. The series shows how the myths, rituals
and belief systems change as we developed from hunter gatherers to settled
agrarian lifestyles and throught the rise of citystates and ancient
civilizations, etc. In short, Campbell's MASKS OF GOD shows "how 3rd level
patterns of value maintain societies and how they evolve".
Of course the idea of rights and equality are intellectual principles and
tend to contradict most, if not all, pre-intellectual societies. But
Campbell takes on Modernity too.
By the way, he too has recognized the perennial philosophy. His first book,
which was his PhD thesis, tries to show that all cultures in all times,
despite the outward differences and particular manifestations, have created
mythologies that express one essential hero, one essential idea of the ideal
person. That book is called THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES and is remarkable
for the way it shows a common thread through all social level values.
Anyone who wants to understand what the social level of values is all about,
where its been and where it might go in the future, would be well served to
read THE MASKS OF GOD or just about anything by Joseph Campbell.
Thanks,
dmb
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