[MD] Dreaming and death

[Squonkonguitar at aol.com]

Dear Mark and David,
I am caught without image or word, but these last  few posts have inspired 
joy.
Marsha
No.
Love,
Marsha

Mark: What a beautiful thing to say. Thanks Marsha.
 
Mark said:
...the MoQ is asserting that some metaphors are better than  others, not me. 
This is how is goes if i have it right: 1. All sq patterns  are evolving. 2. 
The best ones survive. 3. Therefore, some are better than  others as a matter 
of MoQ (and empirical) fact. ...The MoQ is itself an  intellectual metaphor, 
and the best one yet invented in my opinion. An  intellectual metaphor uses 
abstract symbols to describe reality as sq,  (maths, philosophy, etc.) but 
they all point to DQ. Social metaphors, like  religion, laws, describe 
reality as sq, but point toward DQ.

dmb  replies:
Oh, I see what you're doing. As you're using it, the word 'metaphor'  pretty 
much applies to everything. Its equivalent to static patterns because  all of 
human understanding is a matter of building analogies upon analogies.  Is 
that about right?
 
Mark: Hello. More than about right - spot on.
 
dmb: This is not what I mean at all when I use the word. I'm 
simply  talking about a form of expression. I'm just talking about the 
picture  language of our mythologies, which is much more specific than the 
mythos in  which they exist.
 
Mark: I didn't know the word is used in this way, sorry. I believe it is  
legitimate to use the word metaphor to refer to all aspects of language? But let  
us move on... You said, 'As I understand the term, a metaphor is a concrete  
image that refers to a spiritual reality, 
a reality that is intellecutally  unknowable.' If i have it right, and i 
believe this is how Pirsig  tackles the matter, the alphabet, numbers, logic and 
poetry are picture  languages of our current mythology.
 

dmb: See, when you asked about which was better than the others the  title of 
Joseph Campbell's first book popped into my mind; "The hero with a  Thousand 
Faces". To put the main premise in Pirsigian terms, we could say  that there 
is a Dynamic value force constant enough in human experience that  every 
culture has depicted it in myth and celebrated it in some way. Thus we  have 
a single hero, but with a thousand faces. Each culture uses the  metaphors 
that make sense to them in their context, but the value force  being 
expressed are essentially the same.
 
Mark: Fair enough. But we have evolution to deal with. If we recognise  
evolution then we committ ourselves to a better/worse distinction. More  
specifically, a sq/DQ distinction - the better patterns (the more Dynamic ones)  
survive. The thousand faces of the single hero are becoming more Dynamic as our  hero 
evolves, so Campbell's title may be a little static for our  purposes. Maybe 
he should have titled it, 'The ever evolving face of the hero'.  or something?

dmb: Pirsig's nightmare octopus could have been a squid or  a swarm of bees. 
The 
surface can change shape in all kinds of directions but  still do a good job 
of expressing the fear it depicts, for  example.

But if we drop the "metaphor" problem and simply ask if  intellectual 
descriptions should be preferred over social level references,  I'd say sure, 
okay.
 
Mark: Fair enough. Actually, the whole metaphor = sq pattern stuff may be  
considered to be entirely an intellectual activity.
I think this approach leads to allot of postmodernist confusion, but MoQ  
value evolution allows us to talk about good and evil in a way postmodernists  
cannot.
 
dmb: But part of what I've been saying is that if we read the myths as  
myths instead of misreading them as history or metaphysics or whatever, then  
we don't have to pick one over the other because then the two depictions are  
not in conflict. They don't tell a different story so much as they tell it  
differently. The MOQ's philosophical mysticism and the myths of our culture  
only illuminate each other. They speak to us on different levels, but the  
message is the same. Or so it seems to me.

dmb
 
Mark: That's what i said: 'Orpheus may have been the  
best  metaphor at the social level before the best intellectual metaphor at 
the   
intellectual level emerged. And they all point toward DQ.'
It seems there is broad agreement between us.
 
Love
Mark