[MD] What Bo Doesn't Get

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Krimel, Andre, all,

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Krimel <Krimel at krimel.com> wrote:
> Steve to Andre:
> I think the mythos is best associated with social patterns.
>
> Krimel to Andre:
> Both mythos and logos are purely parts of the intellectual level.
>
> Andre:
> Hi Steve, Krimel. Thank you both for taking the time to respond to my post.
>
> I do not intend, by highlighting these 2 views above that there is no
> agreement between the 2 points of view. Can I suggest that, keeping
> the Pirsig quote Steve mentioned ( about the cave man... social
> patterns, rituals...from these may emerge intellectual patterns) in
> mind... that those parts of the mythos handed down to us, either in
> written,spoken or other artistic form 'made it' into the intellectual
> level?
>
> [Krimel]
> Ideas that are preserved, however they are preserve: that is the
> intellectual LEVEL. Look at those cave paintings, for example. At the time
> of their painting, the artist and his contemporaries shared an understanding
> of what they were painting and why.

Steve:
If they could indeed talk about WHY they were doing what they were
doing, then they were indeed participating in intellectual patterns,
but according to Pirsig, ritual action preceded such justification of
action, so at some point people were doing such things but could not
tell you why. Such people did not participate in intellectual patterns
at all.


Krimel:
> The intellectual level is made up of ideas and what differs between the
> intellectual level represented in cave painting and the intellectual level
> today is mainly a matter of quantity and technological enhancements that
> make ideas static and less like to be forgotten, things like writing, the
> printing press, film, and the digital revolution.
>
> The _level_ consists not in the use of symbols but in the symbols
> themselves.

Steve:
A slight quibble here. I think that the symbols themselves are best
thought of as social patterns while the "rules" or habits concerning
how such symbols should be manipulated were the intellectual patterns.

As an illustration of Pirsig's point about the absence intellectual
patterns in the Bible, consider the Noah story in Genesis quoted
below. Notice the almost complete lack of any justification for the
events described. The story is pretty much of the form "this happened,
then this happened, then this happened...." We can read into this
story to take it as an explanation of WHY things are as they are that
might ave satisified intellectual yearnings, but tend to think that
reading is our intellectually ethnocentric view of how these stories
functioned considering that there is so little about any of it that
reads as an attempt to explain or justify anything intellectually. the
story functions to answer the socially relevent question "who are we
as a people or society?" rather than the intellectual question "why
are things as they are?"

A key is to consider the use of the word "because." So often in the
Bible, the word is used in sentences where the "reason" for an action
seems to have nothing to do with what it is supposed to explain, but
since this word is sometimes used an dbecause there is a grammar for
prescribing how sybols are organized to form words and sentences, we
still see the beginnings of participation in intellectual patterns.

For example, there is the justification that God decided to destroy
the earth BECAUSE the people were all wicked. This statement captures
the upper limit of the extent to which the Bible represents
participation in intellectual patterns in these chapters, which is to
say to only a very rudimentary degree.

Again, I cite this example as evidence that people did not always have
intellectual patterns. Social patterns preceded intellectual patterns
and even in writing and early art we can be looking almost exclusively
at participation in social patterns only and perhaps only very very
limited participation in intellectual patterns in cases where some
justification of behavior is attempted and in the grammar of how words
are organized in telling a story or the "grammar" of how lines are
used in drawing a picture.

Best,
Steve



Genesis 6
The Flood
 1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters
were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men
were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the
LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with [a] man forever, for he is
mortal [b] ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."
 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also
afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had
children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

 5 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become,
and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the
earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, "I will
wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and
animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the
air—for I am grieved that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in
the eyes of the LORD.

 9 This is the account of Noah.
      Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his
time, and he walked with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and
Japheth.

 11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence.
12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on
earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, "I am going to
put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence
because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.
14 So make yourself an ark of cypress [c] wood; make rooms in it and
coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it:
The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. [d] 16
Make a roof for it and finish [e] the ark to within 18 inches [f] of
the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and
upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to
destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath
of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will
establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and
your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. 19 You are to
bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to
keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind
of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground
will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of
food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for
them."

 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

Genesis 7
 1 The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole
family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take
with you seven [g] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate,
and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and
also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their
various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will
send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will
wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."

 5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

 6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the
earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives
entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean
and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the
ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God
had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came
on the earth.

 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day
of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep
burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And
rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

 13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth,
together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the
ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind,
all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves
along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its
kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the
breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The
animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God
had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.

 17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the
waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The
waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on
the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all
the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The
waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty
feet. [h] , [i] 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth
perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm
over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had
the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the
face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures
that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from
the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

 24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

Genesis 8
 1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock
that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and
the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates
of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from
the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of
the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the
seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the
mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth
month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the
mountains became visible.

 6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7
and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the
water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if
the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove
could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all
the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He
reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself
in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove
from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there
in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the
water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and
sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

 13 By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and
first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed
the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was
dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was
completely dry.

 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 "Come out of the ark, you and your wife
and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living
creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the
creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth
and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."

 18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his
sons' wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along
the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came
out of the ark, one kind after another.

 20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the
clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21
The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never
again will I curse the ground because of man, even though [j] every
inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will
I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

 22 "As long as the earth endures,
       seedtime and harvest,
       cold and heat,
       summer and winter,
       day and night
       will never cease."

Genesis 9
God's Covenant With Noah
 1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful
and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you
will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the
air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the
fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that
lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green
plants, I now give you everything.
 4 "But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5
And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will
demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will
demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.

 6 "Whoever sheds the blood of man,
       by man shall his blood be shed;
       for in the image of God
       has God made man.

 7 As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the
earth and increase upon it."

 8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 "I now establish
my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with
every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and
all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with
you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with
you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood;
never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."

 12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making
between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for
all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and
it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14
Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the
clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all
living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a
flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the
clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between
God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

 17 So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have
established between me and all life on the earth."

The Sons of Noah
 18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and
Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons
of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the
earth.
 20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded [k] to plant a vineyard. 21
When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered
inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's
nakedness and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth
took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in
backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned
the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.

 24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son
had done to him, 25 he said,
       "Cursed be Canaan!
       The lowest of slaves
       will he be to his brothers."

 26 He also said,
       "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
       May Canaan be the slave of Shem. [l]

 27 May God extend the territory of Japheth [m] ;
       may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
       and may Canaan be his [n] slave."

 28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years. 29 Altogether, Noah lived
950 years, and then he died.