From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Sep 05 2005 - 08:41:18 BST
DMB and all.
You are a master of your mythological trade and I shudder to
think how many pearls have been thrown before swines at this
site. It's not just you, but all who write long pieces of penetrating
stuff that take them endless labor and then, after a day or two,
are all forgotten. Good grief. But I hope it builds characters.
1st. September you wrote one such piece to prove you thesis that
MOQ's Dynamic Quality corresponds to mysticism. Something I
agree with if one sees on it from intellect's S/O point of view -
not necessarily from MOQ's own which departs also from all
intellect's dualities also the mystical/clarity one.
> Plato's blunder, the one where he turned DQ into a static form, has a
> very interesting parallel in the history of our Western religion. Or
> rather, the church committed a variation on Plato's blunder, just like
> everybody else. Or maybe we could just think of it as another chapter
> in the story of how mysticism was lost...
It's a most strange idea that Plato & Co corrupted DQ. According
to the MOQ there are the static levels and if anything, Plato along
with the Greek thinkers dynamically turned static social value into
static intellectual value.
About "western religion". What happened is that the newfangled
intellect made its way to the Middle East and influenced the
existing social-value Mosaic culture there. A sensitive "Sophist"
called Jesus picked up the signals and proclaimed that Mosaic
Law wasn't the ultimate, rather that Man was.
> "Nearly all the peoples around the Mediterranean had at some point
> adopted the Pagan mysteries and adapted them to their own national
> taste. At some point in the first few centuries BCE a group of Jews
> had done likewise and produced a Jewish version of the Mysteries.
> Jewish initiates adapted the myths of Osiris-Dionysus to produce the
> story of a Jewsh dying and resurrecting godman. , Jesus the Messiah.
Bernadette is of course an intellectual interpreter, while we are
supposed to see things from the MOQ. Up to the Jesus part she
is right and maybe about Jesus too with a few qualifications. The
way I see it his disciples did not follow up on the intellectual
content of his teachings, but shifted back to the (social) value of
magic and miracles. Thus its intellectual value of human rights
and individual freedom was suppressed for centuries.
When Christendom was made official religion by the Romans and
the Church started to churn out new complicated dogmas it may
well be seen as corruption of its Semitic (social) simplicity of one
God. At least Mohammed felt so when Christians began to arrive
at his native land. He started a movement to bring things back to
monotheism simplicity ...but that's another story.
> This is another way of saying that DQ was buried under static clap
> trap, static misinterpretations that prevent one from seeing the DQ
> those static forms were meant to represent...
As said the idea that some era or people interacted with DQ on a
daily basis is a little weird. What is described in ZMM (as the
emergence of SOM) is also that of the intellectual level from its
social past. The Sophists were intellectuals too, but they
represented its subjective component, while Socrates & Co.
represented the objective part.
> "My favorite defintion of religion is 'a misinterpretation of
> mythology'. The misinterpretation consists precisely in attributing
> historical references to symbols which properly are spiritual in their
> reference." Joseph Campbell
That one I agree with!
> "When an American Indian goes into isolation and fasts in order to
> achieve a vision, the vision he seeks in not a romantic understanding
> of the surface beauty of the world. (Its not seen with the eye of
> flesh) Neither is it a vision of the world's classic intellectual
> form. (Its not seen with the eye of the mind) It is something else.
> Since this whole metaphysics had started with an attempt to explain
> Indian mysticism (Seen with the eye of contemplation.) Phaedrus
> finally abandoned this classic-romatic split as a choice for the
> primary division of the MOQ. The division he finally..."
The American Indian - and all "pagan" cultures - can be called
magical; an existence without sharp borders between Man and
the environment, one that could be manipulated by rituals (a
remnant of this is prayers) i.e: no subject/object distinction. When
an Indian, an Aboriginal, whoever went into a trance it was a
means to get in touch with the forces. This "original participation"
are often looked back upon with envy and various ways back
have been pondered, but only from the MOQ can we see the
great picture, and also that there is no way back: The "golden
age" was the social existence that the intellectual existence
replaced, but to postulate that social existence (people)
possessed some special link to DQ is wrong, it was just intellect's
separation of mankind from his world that hadn't arrived. But DQ
is always AHEAD and young Phaedrus got "in touch" with it from
intellect and created the Quality Existence.
> You may recall Anthony's recent post in which he explains the
> centrality of Native American mysticism and the vision Pirsig recieved
> during that peyote ceremony. The classic romantic split is abandon
> because it can't explain Indian mysticism and takes up the
> static/Dynamic split because it can.
The classic/romantic split was left because it - in the MOQ -
corresponds only to the social/intellectual transition. If MOQ
"orthodoxy" would have seen this, it would have seen that it
marries ZMM and LILA - not like someone writes that the two
books has little to do with each other.
> And since the whole metaphysics
> was aimed at explaining it, I get a little bummed when MOQers suggest
> we minimize, reduce or otherwise take the Dynamic back out again.
Well, this is something I'm not guilty of ...hopefully.
> Near the end of chapter 30:
> "He could only guess how far back this ritual-cosmos relationship
> went, maybe fifty or one hundred thousand years. Cave men are usually
> depicted as hairy, stupid creatures who don't do much, but
> anthropological studies of contemporary primitive tribes suggest that
> stone age people were probably bound by ritual all day long. There's a
> ritual for washing, for putting up a house, for hunting, for eating
> and so on - so much so that the division between 'ritual' and
> 'knowledge' becomes indistinct. In cultures without books ritual seems
> to be a public library for teaching the young and preserving common
> values and information. These rituals may be the connecting link
> between the social and intellectual levels of evolution. One can
> imagine primitive song-rituals and dance-rituals associated with
> certain cosmology stories, myths, which generated the first primitive
> religions. From these the first intellectual truths could have been
> derived. ..."
Yes, ritual is the hub of the social reality, and that the intellectual
level developed from the social is also a MOQ tenet. At what
time Pirsig sees this separation beginning? It sounds already with
the cave-men because what's characteristic for mankind IS
"cosmologies", but IMO the description given in ZMM of how
TRUTH came to pass shows its final stage.
> And in a week or so, I shall try to explain how the Western assumption
> of the pre-existing subjective self is the very assumption that
> prevents us from seeing this.
Good, but note that the pre-existing subjective self is inseparable
from the "pre-existing objective world" and here we have the
SOM - or the intellectual level - that prevents us from seeing the
Quality context.
> By way of classical Bhuddist philosophy,
> I hope to show how "...the belief in one's own individuality can be
> seen as the ultimate form of self-deception and that customs and
> rituals can be seen as one of the most powerful mechanisms by which
> this deception is sustained." Richard Hayes in a paper titled "RITUAL,
> SELF-DECEPTION AND MAKE-BELIEVE: A CLASSICAL BUDDHIST
> PERSPECTIVE"
Right, when Pirsig (and you) turn Buddhists you also turn SOLists
who see the need to transcend intellect's independent
subject/object distinction. As philosophers however you turn
idealists where intellect is seen as mind from which no escape is
possible.
> Thanks for reading,
Thank you, it's been a pleasure ...to criticise ;-).
Bo
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