Krimel said to dmb: Who says that today's myths any more alienating than myths of the past? Do you find the gods and goddess meddling in the Trojan wars endearing? Do Kali and Shiva sound like people you want for neighbors?
dmb replies: Who says? Lots of people. I'm talking about what Max Weber called "the disenchanted world" or what Ken Wilber calls "flatland". Nietzsche's phrase is probably the most famous; "The death of God". Hiedegger called it "enframing", a word that conveys the idea of a structure, a limited scope and a skeleton all at the same time. Similarly, Pirsig's "amoral scientific materialism" is characterized as a culture-wide emphasis on prediction and control. Jung's "Modern Man in Search of a Soul" addresses this problem. It is more or less the central idea in all of Joseph Campbell's work. Existentialism in general is concerned with it. I imagine there are a whole bunch of other people I don't even know about. The culture warriors on the right complain about this disenchantment in terms like "secular humanism" and this is basically what's behind the battle between science and religion. You know, the one that's been going on for at least a century or two. But Nietzsche's "death of God" doesn't just mean the inability to believe in religion. Its about the evacuation of all values. Pirsig's complaints about SOM in general and old style sensory empiricism in particular should ring a bell on that account. Maybe you don't appreciate the problem or care about it but it has been widely recognized and discussed. It certainly isn't about how cozy I feel or who I'd want for a neighbor. Although it would be nice if Kate Beckinsale moved in next door. Krimel said: What made life cozy back in the day was its Static quality. Little changed from one generation to the next and even if life was hard people knew what to expect from it. dmb replies: That's true enough but that's not really the problem I'm talking about, which is the alienating effect of the prevailing mythos. Philosophers talk about it but there is also a bumper sticker I see from time to time. It says something like, "a tiny speck in a ruthless universe". That's what I see in the rush hour battle of the christian fish against darwin fish and in a gazillion other places. Ever notice how christian fish types drive too slowly and don't mind at all about being in the way? That cracks me up because its such a nice metaphor for their role in the culture. _________________________________________________________________ Make every e-mail and IM count. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Join/Default.aspx?source=EML_WL_ MakeCount 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/
