From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 13:15:44 BST
Platt
In the “myths and symbols” post you said:
“The aborigines engage in mythical thinking supported by ritual as
opposed to logical thinking supported by measurement of displacements
in time and space. Mythos vs. logos. Or, groupthink vs. autonomous
individual. Or, social values vs. intellectual values.”
I said:
“the best description of the mythos is a collection of intellectual
patterns”
This obviously needs further expansion, so here is a start.
In ZMM Pirsig describes the mythos
“The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is
born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to
the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos,
transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common
knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man.
To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this
mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.
There is only one kind of person, Phædrus said, who accepts or rejects
the mythos in which he lives. And the definition of that person, when he
has rejected the mythos, Phædrus said, is "insane." To go outside the
mythos is to become insane.” ZMM p351
In Lila he notes the following:
“If the baby ignores this force of Dynamic Quality it can be speculated
that he will become mentally retarded, but if he is normally attentive
to Dynamic Quality he will soon begin to notice differences and then
correlations between the differences and then repetitive patterns of the
correlations. But it is not until the baby is several months old that he
will begin to really understand enough about that enormously complex
correlation of sensations and boundaries and desires called an object to
be able to reach for one. This object will not be a primary experience.
It will be a complex pattern of static values derived from primary
experience.
Once the baby has made a complex pattern of values called an object and
found this pattern to work well he quickly develops a skill and speed at
jumping through the chain of deductions that produced it, as though it
were a single jump…in a very short time it becomes so swift one doesn’t
even think about it….only when an “object” turns out to be an illusion
is one forced to become aware of the deductive process” …In this way
static patterns of value become the universe of distinguishable things.
Elementary static distinctions between such entities as “before” and
“after” and between “like” and “unlike” grow into enormously complex
patterns of knowledge that are transmitted from generation to generation
as the mythos, the culture in which we live.” Lila p.138
The mythos is the “universe of distinguishable things” stored in
“complex patterns of knowledge that are transmitted from generation to
generation” by each society. The deductions based on an immediate
apprehension of value made as an infant and subsequently affirmed or
denied by society constitute our static reality, this is reaffirmed in
SODV:
“The Metaphysics of Quality agrees with scientific realism that these
inorganic patterns are completely real, and there is no reason that box
shouldn't be there, but it says that this reality is ultimately a
deduction made in the first months of an infant's life and supported by
the culture in which the infant grows up.” SODV
So to expand my definition slightly– the mythos is the collection of
socially learned or approved intellectual patterns of value. As a
consequence, I think that associating the mythos solely with social
patterns seems to miss some of the key points made by the MOQ.
Just a start of course, what do you think?
Paul
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