[MD] Logos is not ergon

[X Acto]

Matt,
 The choice of words you use lead me to think that perhaps we're coming at
differing angles of contemplation and context. I think where your meaning
is centered, thoughts are indeed a kind of action, an intent.
I have to admit, I really wasn't prepared to take it that far and illustrates
rather well what I was trying to convey about meaning.
So to be clear I do think of thoughts or words to be a type of action
an inward type that may or may not manifest as an outward expression
of that particular action.
I am not sure whether or not it was interpreted that way in Greek culture,
to me thats a rather heady concept for the average joe Greek of ancient
times. To me, social obligations of virtue seems closer to the mark
"I mean what I say and say what I mean" honoring our promises
our word as a social bond, trust. I interpreted Logos as ergon
as conveying a type of honosty a virtue of deed and word
a "see no evil, hear no evil speak no evil" act no evil type
of virtue, a kind of purity in thought and action, an excellence.
Yet this gets mixed witha kind of reification if I follow you.

Now on to reflection loops, assumption of known truths and the generally
narrow of mind. The movie "waterboy" with adam Sandler comes to mind.
In this comedy, a young man was raised in the bayue and grew up instructed
by his "mama", homeschooled as it were. As an adolesent he obtains the job
of waterboy for the local college football team. They find he has incedible talent as an
athelete of sorts but he must take classes at the university to play.
  In class he corrects the proffessors, citing momma as the absolute source of 
true knowledge. Of course hilarity insues but it makes a statement about certainty
in meaning and how people tend to cling to that. I think cling is a poor word, lets say
it never occurs to them that any other interpretation could apply, that thoughts, actions,
right and wrong are as obvious and simple and plain as day.
Society and culture are invisible to them. right is us, wrong is them. it speaks of a kind
of emersion of obliviousness explained and reinforced by the mythos of culture and society
the tradgedies of heroes and villans. Instilled by authority figures at an age where the impressions
of mother and father, the creators of our heaven and earth the superior authorities of our
lives formed our early metaphysical concepts. Ones we tend to build on. Often I believe
that how people are raised, play a fundemental role in how they concieve of reality, how
they reflect and how they are open to new ideas with a no fear attitude of the confidence
in not knowing.

Questioning is work, it takes strength and conviction. It is usually not very popular and
an anti-social leaning. Being your own person takes courage.

this forum is an example of a collection of couragous people.

Freinds of mine call what we do here "mental masturbation"
it is what it is, why make more of it?

But you see I can't because I don't see it like that. I really never have. It always
kinda seemed like a game that people took way too seriously.
And the things that really did have meaning, like compassion, respect, moderation
honosty, were like games to them and they thought that I took those types of 
values alittle too seriously. You see, I was a kind of "water boy" only I always
doubted myself. I could'nt be correct because I was unfamilier with the society.
 Now being an old pro at culture and being the social dude I am, I have accumulated
a rather dense set of opinions but I also aquired the openess for revision and appending
those beliefs, it not always pretty, the revision, it's usually a bloody struggle.
As a boy, I was never sure of anything. I was afraid to have an opinion.
now I have grown some fairly sturdy yet flexible values, I feel more confident
and realized, I feel more concrete,especially when those values are what I feel
like are aligned to the natural way or flow of the dynamic. Atype of feeling of security
that runs through the fibre of my being.

_Ron





----- Original Message ----
From: Matt Kundert <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 2:29:03 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Logos is not ergon


Ron said:
with regards to Andre and his post, I feel you greatly 
misunderstand his meaning. it is exactly the virtue of 
logos as ergon he laments as lost to the ego and the 
selfishness of the "I" at the expense of the community. 
To lawyers and wordsmiths worshiping at the alter of 
materialist desires. Greed has replaced honor as the 
virtue of the culture as it distorts logos and twists ergon.

Andre said:
Excellent Ron, I could not have said it better. If I 
understand Kitto in 'The Greeks' properly, the 
relationship between word and deed was much closer (if 
not the same) than it is now. We are talking about the 
time of arete, the time before any systematic philosophy 
(intellect) had 'evolved' out of the social level (this, Pirsig 
of course argues, happened with Aristotle). A social PoV 
not yet kidnapped by intellect to serve its own purposes.

Matt:
That's interesting, and a bit as at cross-purposes, I think, 
with what I said as what I said was with either of you.  
But I'm not sure.

1) I'm not going to defend lawyers.

2) I'm not going to defend consumerism or neoclassical, 
Chicago school economics.

3) I wasn't exactly talking about the ego of "egotistical," 
though I will grant they relate.

4) In contradistinction to Ron, I absolutely think words 
are actions.  Everything we do is an action in a pragmatist 
view, though that doesn't itself begin the distinctions to be 
made between different kinds of actions.  To not think 
words are actions is to greatly underestimate the notion of 
psychological damage. (I don't care if you _talk about_ 
pragmatism, Ron, I'm simply commenting on the 
occasional things you say that are at odds with what I 
take to be its insights.  The only reason I find it interesting 
is because of our similar take on what happened in 
Greece, and your use of Barry Allen's book on truth--he's 
basically a pragmatist.)

5) I do, in contradistinction to both of you, think it's 
actually a pretty good thing that the "relationship 
between word and deed" are not as close as they used to 
be.  This is something I began to realize a couple years 
ago in pursuing Greek studies around rhetoric and 
historical change.  As I see it, rhetoric composes the 
routes of thought our minds engage in--the shorter the 
route between an event that kicks you up into a reflective 
thought-loop and the action-consequence dump-out at 
the end of the thought-loop, the _less thought_ goes into 
the reflection over which action-consequence should be 
taken.  In other words, spazzes and fundamentalists have 
short thought-loops.

As I see it, the whole movement of secularization, the 
movement that helped end the bloody Religious Wars in 
Europe--where people would react upon hearing a single 
word, "Catholic" or "Lutheran"--was a movement for the 
elongation of thought-loops, of the rhetorical routes 
between one action and another action.

I think more thought is good.  I think a little elongation in 
the thought of some practitioners of Islam and Christianity 
would be good.  Yet, on the other hand, impotence to act 
is bad, so it's not as if I want thought-loops to be infinitely 
long.

Matt
                        
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