Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Sun, 28 Sep 1997 16:52:38 +0100
Diana's example of Intellect's impotence in describing the taste of
chocolate was splendid. It reminds me of my guru of old Colin Wilson whose
favourite example of "language's inadequacy" (as he calls it) is to
distinguish between the taste of an orange and a tangerine. This goes for
any taste, not only differences. It goes for ALL values of the organic
level
and, well, and partly the social ones although here language starts to
interfere. I think poetry is the linguistic attempt that probes deepest
downwards from the Intellect, but then, it is art.
Colin Wilson has a hope that in the far future language will achieve this
capacity, but that is in vain. Language can like no other medium convey
intellectual ideas, which is its mission, but the "language" of the body
does this so marvellously well so why bother.
The reason for your reluctance to speak about oriental vs Western values I
understand, but I thought LILA was all about this cultural difference which
is a mystery in a SOM context, but explicable from a MOQ point of view.
Now, what is society and what is culture is another difficult border
definition. Right now we have the Algerian fundamentalist atrocities. It is
completely insanity from our usual rational political standpoint, but I
think the MOQ puts it in perspective. The communal value focussed Islamic
culture (Semitic religions ARE social values made into eternal ones) fights
back against Western intellectual influence. In LILA Pirsig puts the
fascism and Nazism of the second World War in this same context which makes
a lot of sense.
-- post message - mailto:skwok@spark.net.hk unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:41:56 CEST