From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Jul 31 2005 - 21:42:51 BST
Hi Arlo,
> I'm assuming Pirsig considers the Eastern perspective more representative
> of being "a part of the world". His entire treatise, ZMM and then the MOQ,
> came directly out of being exposed to another cultural perspective, both
> historically (in the case of Ancient Greek) and personally (in the case of
> his travels East, and studies in India). He may not have agreed with every
> alternate cultural perspective, but exposure to the high Quality ones led
> to ZMM.
I've nothing against travel or learning about other cultures that have
achieved something of high quality, like the Japanese Zen gardens. I just
don't want diversity forced down my throat by quotas based on race, sex or
creed.
> [Platt previously]
> What Pirsig found was no so much that we're all one big happy kumbaya
> family (a view shouted from the housetops by every environmentalist on the
> planet) but that the scientific criteria of truth which, while a very high
> quality intellectual pattern, contained a devastating oversight -- no
> provision for morals. To see his work otherwise is to degrade its
> uniqueness and importance.
>
> [Arlo]
> To your first point of contention, that a less "I" centric culture is less
> Quality, I'd offer again Pirsig's words stating that the dialectical West
> exchanged for power and wealth "an empire of understanding of equal
> magnitude" in understanding what it means to be part of the world.
> To your second, that intellectual Quality are "above culture", I offer this
> from ZMM: "The term logos, the root word of "logic," refers to the sum
> total of our rational understanding of the world. Mythos is the sum total
> of the early historic and prehistoric myths which preceded the logos. The
> mythos includes not only the Greek myths but the Old Testament, the Vedic
> Hymns and the early legends of all cultures which have contributed to our
> present world understanding. The mythos-over-logos argument states that our
> rationality is shaped by these legends, that our knowledge today is in
> relation to these legends as a tree is in relation to the little shrub it
> once was."
>
> Early in ZMM, Pirsig had this to say about intellect: "My own opinion is
> that the intellect of modern man isn't that superior. IQs aren't that much
> different. Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as we
> are, but the context in which they thought was completely different. Within
> that *context* of thought, ghosts and spirits are QUITE AS REAL AS atoms,
> particles, photons and quants are to modern man."
>
> Notice here that Pirsig is saying that Quality intellectual patterns are
> context dependent. They are not external and independent, but rooted in the
> culture in which they emerge.
>
> Intellectual patterns are not divorced from cultural mythos. Indeed, Pirsig
> makes it clear that cultural valuations are behind what we see and what we
> don't see. From Lila: "When Phaedrus started to read yacht literature he
> ran across a description of the 'green flash' of the sun. What was that all
> about, he wondered. Why hadn't *he* seen it? He was sure he had never seen
> the green flash of the sun. Yet he *must* have seen it. But if he saw it,
> why didn't he *see* it? This static filter (social semiotic values) was the
> explanation. He didn't see the green flash of the sun because he'd never
> been *told* to see it. ... The culture hadn't told him to so he hadn't seen
> it."
>
> Just as evolution within a culture depends on individuals with different
> experiences remediating that experience back into the social milieu, so too
> can it benefit from individuals with not only different experiences, but
> different value-generated saliences and thoughts mediating that experience
> into the social milieu. It can help us "see" that which our culture is
> "blind to".
Your quotes for the most part are from ZMM. The one from LIla is based on
yachting which is irrelevant to this discussion. I agree with Bo that LIla
supersedes ZMM in some respects, and I think the equalization of culture
with intellect is one. In fact, in Lila, "logical consistency" is one of
his criteria of truth. As for cultural influences, I have never denied
them. But they are not all, or else there would be no evolution.
> Now, of course the strawman argument is that if we place value on cultural
> diversity, we must be cultural relativists. There are high Quality
> intellectual patterns we can learn from other cultures, and low Quality
> ones. We must not be afraid to judge "foreign" cultural values, but nor
> should we ignore them as having nothing to offer.
Agree.
> Had Pirsig never been exposed to, what are undoubtably, "non-white,
> non-western" cultural-intellectual values, we would not have ZMM and Lila.
> In his case, he was able to weave a synthesis that enlarges both
> perspectives. Indeed, a central premise in Lila is how exposure to Indian
> cultural values shaped, and strengthened, not just frontier values, but
> eventually American values as a whole. Were it not for the Indian, we would
> not be who we are.
Agree.
> A second strawman is that I'm arguing this flows unidirectionally. Exposure
> to Western high Quality cultural-intellectual patterns can improve the
> static intellectual patterns of other cultures. And they would be right to
> reject our low Quality intellectual patterns.
> In sum, "2+2=4" or the "law of gravity" are not acultural intellectual
> patterns. They are intellectual patterns valued highly by our culture, but
> they do not exist independently of it. They are real only in the context in
> which we think. Just as the "ghosts" were to the Indians.
Mathematics and the scientific method would not have attained their power
unless adopted and used by all civilized cultures. There are some people
of much higher intellect than me who believe mathematical truths exist
above all cultures in a Platonic realm. Roger Penrose for one.
You keep coming back to the idea that reality is what we think, that
nothing exists until we think it into being. Is philosophical Idealism
your underlying premise and explanation of reality?
Platt
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