From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Wed Nov 26 2003 - 20:02:00 GMT
Hi Mark
Mark said:
Homer was not one man - Homer is the merging of a whole era of poems and
creativity stretching back into prehistory.
Paul:
This is the current belief.
Mark said:
Writing requires the manipulation of a symbolic language, and that is an
intellectual process is it not?
Paul:
I think that if it is a conscious act of submitting patterns of thought
to record (as it generally is now), then yes. That isn't what Jaynes is
saying early writing was though. He is suggesting that it was not that
patterns of thought produced writing but that writing brought about a
new awareness of patterns of thought.
Mark 26a-11-03: I see. The Homeric tradition was probably oral for a very
long time before writing? In the oral tradition, many rhythms and patterns were
artistically separate from the social function of the stories? These rhythms
and patterns, viewed separately from the social function of the stories may have
been highly reinforced in the application of writing? So, the new awareness
of patterns of thought probably predate writing - writing may have accelerated
something that had been evolving for a long time?
Mark said:
I do not feel we need Jaynes' theories to support the MoQ - reading the
Iliad, etc. for oneself does that?
Paul:
Well, when I read Iliad at school it never occurred to me that maybe
when ancients wrote of Gods it was not a wonder of imaginative fancy but
a straightforward account of experience dictated to them in a process of
volition as natural to them as thinking is to us. Perhaps I am not as
smart as you :-)
Mark 26a-11-03: My view of people doing what they did in response to hearing
Deity was gained from watching 'Jason and the Argonauts' when about six years
old. And i am being totally serious.
You know you are smarter than me so let's not have any false modesty please!
Paul:
I agree that we don't need any theory to support the MOQ but it was
actually on Pirsig's recommendation that I decided to give it a look,
just as I was led to Herrigel and Northrop. Anyway, it's there to read
for anyone interested and I won't harp on about it.
Mark said:
Language is the manipulation of symbols and therefore an intellectual
development?
Paul:
Yes, I think that when language is manipulating symbols into patterns of
thought it is intellectual; when it is an extension of ritual and custom
it is social.
Paul quoted Pirsig:
"I had always assumed that this blockage of direct quality perception
was social, but in Mexico a few years ago I talked to a neurologist who
argued that it was physiological. She said that recent experiments are
showing that the right side of the brain, the "artistic" side, filters
all experience before it reaches the left "rational" side of the brain.
This would concur with the MOQ assertion that value precedes concepts in
human understanding. I have read elsewhere that the left rational side
of the brain can never perceive the right brain as an object, but only
receive messages from it. This would explain why everyone knows that
something is better than other things but no one can define what this
betterness is. All they get are the quality messages but they don't know
where the quality messages are coming from. This is not to say that the
right brain creates the quality, only that it filters it before passing
it along to the left brain for conceptualizing."
Mark said:
If this is so, then there may be a 'sweet spot' between brain
hemispheres where neither has the upper hand?
Paul:
Interesting, I wonder if you can develop either side when it is lacking?
Mark 26a-11-03: ZMM indicated our Mythos to be dominated by certain aesthetic
principles - truth, logic and systematic hierarchy. Those of us who can win
that game do rather well out of it, but those who lose don't tend to get much
economic reward or status perhaps?
So, developing one side or the other may depend on whether one can afford to
or not?
Mark said:
I have read evidence (Paul Oliver - The birth of the Blues) suggesting
African slaves working in the Southern states of the USA displayed
exceptional left/right brain balance and were capable of performing
highly sophisticated physical movements (which lead to the term
'rocking' in popular music) and/or verbal tricks.
Maybe the genetic fault in rationality is an imbalance of aesthetic
appreciation due to the suppression of artistic value?
Paul:
"You never gain something but that you lose something." Thoreau, I
think.
Mark 26a-11-03: My bank account can attest to that! ;)
Mark said:
African musicians, when played examples of complex modern jazz, reported
how unsophisticated it was. I do not know about you, but i find that
startling, and i feel those African musicians were evolving an
intellectual language of music that is exceptional for its being
incapable of notation.
If these people were at one with the creative process in the same way a
mathematician is at one with the creative process, then being at one
with the creative process is the norm while insisting on a 'me' outside
that process is off kilter? Maybe those Jaynes poets were more normal
than we are?
Paul:
Perhaps! Actually, I've read a theory of the origin of language that
suggests speaking started out as singing which ties in with Pirsig's
link with ritual dancing and accounts for the presence of "poetic" meter
in early writing.
Cheers
Paul
Mark 26a-11-03: I like the sound of that. The Welsh language has an unbroken
line to Proto European language - No Ancient Greek intermediary. The Welsh
'Shakespeare' writing in the 6th century used very sophisticated rhymes and
rhythms the likes of which we simply cannot copy or appreciate without speaking
Welsh. Some of this is available spoken on CD Sain record label
www.sain.wales.com
The Welsh also cope with Maths and logic just as every bit as well as other
moderns, so i feel intellect has a broad pallet upon which to create than it's
very narrow application today? I may be hopelessly misleading myself!!
All the best,
Mark
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