From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Jul 05 2003 - 15:30:27 BST
Hi Rick,
> While Phaedrus's initial perception of the Giant came through a Dynamic
> perception of reality, the Giant itself he explicitly declares in the last
> paragraph quoted, is code for static social patterns ("...People took upon
> the social patterns of the Giant..."). This would make Platt correct in
> placing the Giant on the third level (at least in Pirsig's estimation).
> Moreover, the farmer analogy indicates Phaedrus's insight is that
> biological man (like the biological chicken) is really just being used by
> the Giant. A 'farmer', keep in mind, is himself a social pattern and thus a
> 'tendril' of the Giant (to mix metaphors). That is, the analogy breaks
> down to ---Giant (social pattern) is to man (biological pattern) what
> farmer (social pattern) is to chicken (biological pattern). I believe the
> overall inference is that the Giant is the "sum total of all social
> patterns" and therefore I think both Platt and Johnny's conceptions of the
> Giant are too narrow. Free enterprise, capitalism, governments,
> agriculture, etc are all just "organs" of the Giant. Like a biological
> human needs a heart and lungs and a brain, a sociological Giant needs an
> economy, a government and plenty of farmers.
I really like your metaphor of "organs" of the Giant and agree with your
broader definition to include free markets, governments, agriculture, etc.
"The sum total of all social patterns" is a pretty good definition of
"culture" except that a culture also includes intellectual patterns as
Pirsig points out in Note 47 in Lila's Child, "A culture should be defined
as social patterns plus intellectual patterns." Without doubt, my previous
definition of the Giant and the "Gods" needed broadening.
Since cultures, defined as "the sum total of ways of living built up by a
group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another"
(Random House, unabridged) were obviously in place long before the rise of
the intellectual level (Pirsig often refers to primitive cultures),
intellectual patterns (manipulation of symbols) must have also been around
since prehistoric man although much less a factor than the dominant social
level pattern. The cave paintings at Lascaux prove the point.
In spite of a having small brain as a minor organ, the Giant remains
firmly ensconced within the social level, as do all cultures prior to the
Aristotle. After that, intellectual patterns gradually became dominant
(after a Dark Ages interlude), eventually becoming so dominant as to be a
level of their own.
Platt
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