[MD] Some historical perspective

[markhsmit]

Hey Matt,
Yes, there might be selective amnesia in some posts (see below).  I for one
make sure I know everything before I make sweeping statements, (heh, heh).
But yes, it is important to keep history in perspective.  I don't believe the
intellect has changed much for many thousands of years.  I don't think
evolution happens that quickly.

Take the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Apart from the gods and stuff, and embellishment
by the story tellers for gathering a captive audience, it sounds
like a modern day event.  But it happened 5,000 years ago, give or take.
While the intellect has not evolved, the complexity of its expression has.
Once a man had more to do than catch that mammoth, and was
was thrust into a Sumerian city (around 3000 BC) he had to worry about why
his wife always dressed so nicely when going to visit the neighbor.  So the 
complexity of human interaction may have evolved, but not the underlying biology.

That complexity is still based on the same sensibility as before.

While a man was not hunting a mammoth, he was probably wondering
what he was doing here, what was reality, what comprised his inner sense
of being.  Metaphysical understanding is still doing this.  Perhaps now with
Quality we can stop asking and get back to business.

Cheers,
Willblake2

On Oct 26, 2009, at 7:37:28 PM, "Matt Kundert" <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
Bo said:
The "Greeks" times have been deemed a fundamental 
upheaval by historians, philosophers, writers, thinkers 
...etc. but no one had interpreted it like Pirsig's SOM so it 
has not reached any mythological status. This is the 
world-shaking revelation of ZAMM and if you see Matt's 
blog as "debunking" it you are even dumber than he is. 
You can mean whatever you want about my SOL .... even 
step on my blue suede shoes ... but ZAMM's on SOM is 
inviolable.

Matt:
This just seems silly. The notion of "classical Greece," 
as a time of Enlightenment before the "World" fell into the 
"Dark Ages," is a very distinguished European myth with 
a long pedigree. Even after scholars and intellectuals 
stopped treating Ancient Greece as the Cradle of All 
Things Great, all still consider that time a hotbed of 
cultural change.

My stupid close reading of ZMM and what Pirsig means by 
SOM aside (foolish me for engaging in intellectual 
dialogue), what is weird and strange above is the 
relationship between ZMM as a piece of intellectual 
scholarship and the rest of intellectual scholarship--i.e., it 
creates the impression that you are entirely ignorant of 
any other intellectual scholarship but Pirsig's. Which I 
know is not true, but it is certainly how you appear most 
of the time.

Matt

_________________________________________________________________
Windows 7: It works the way you want. Learn more.
http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/windows-7/default.aspx?ocid=PID24727::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WWL_WIN_evergreen2:102009
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/