Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Thu, 13 Nov 1997 17:07:22 +0100
Ken Clark wrote (Nov11):
> Did anyone else read a couple of months ago about the group of naturally
> mumified people who were found in western China. Their facial and bone
> structure as well as their clothes and artifacts indicated that they were
> caucasian. The find was dated to about 2000 BC. If this turns out to be a
> valid find it could mean that there was contact between east and west, and
> thus crossfertilization of ideas some 1300 years before Socrates. If I
> recall correctly there is only about one time zone between Arabia and the
> Indus. I think that Subject-Object Metaphysics was a fact from the dawn of
> awareness. This sort of connection is fascinating to me-anyone else. Ken
> Clark
>
Hello Ken Clark, welcome to the LS.
This is really an interesting piece of information, but I am
unsure of your conclusion. Do you mean to say that Pirsig is wrong?
That there was no original "proto-quality- metaphysics" that the SOM
eventually replaced within Western culture? I just assume that this
is your opinion, and go on from there.
Pirsig (in ZMM) speaks very generally of "the first Greek
philosophers", I guess Thales (600 BC) is regarded as the first
"modern" thinker even if he were still very much steeped in the old
mythology, and this is far younger than the Caucasian people you
mention. They must have been contemporaries of the ancient Egyptian
and/or Babylonian cultures. What "metaphysics" they brought with
them to Asia were very much part of the prevailing archaic-magic-myth
that all cultures of that era shared.
By "sharing" I don't think that the mythologies were identical in
number or names of Gods and Goddesses, but they did not regard them
as "spiritual" entities; They were immortal in contrast to us
mortals. The Mind/Matter division had not been invented! This is
what Pirsig means by the Subject/Object Metaphysics, and whatever we
call it: all historians agree upon that a cultural shift of gigantic
proportions took place around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in
the last hundred years before our era. Personally I think Pirsig's
Proto MOQ/SOM shift is the one that makes most sense, but I look
forward to seeing what arguments you have to back up your assertion.
This is by the way an extremely interesting topic, for example do I
think that the Greek cultural revolution had a counterpart in the
Middle East where the many-gods myths were replaced by the
monotheistic "religion" (perhaps as much of Egyptian origin as
Jewish) where God was removed from his creation (=the world
was left behind as godless=amoral=evil).
Over to you Ken.
Bo.
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