> dmb said:
> This is not even debatable. To have your own brand of logic is to reject 
> logic. Like language and math; logic is a public property.
> 
> djh replies:
> But we all *do* have our own brand of logic…  We have all been raised 
> differently - with different values and have had different life experience so 
> we will find that what is and is not logical will differ between us.  I 
> mentioned previously the following Lila quote.. "'You're sort of another 
> culture,' he said. 'A culture of one. A culture is an evolved static pattern 
> of quality capable of Dynamic change. That's what you are. That's the best 
> definition of you that's ever been invented." ...In other words - by calling 
> Lila a culture of one - he is speaking of the *uniqueness* of Lila and her 
> *particular* values which she has acquired over her life and form the 'debris 
> of her *own* memory'.. 
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> No, I'm fairly certain that you are misreading the idea here. To be a culture 
> of one, as he's explaining it here, is to be a microcosm of the larger 
> culture, a particular way of exemplifying the culture, a partial and 
> particular inflection of the total image. To have your own private culture is 
> to be insane.
> 
> Pirsig says, "we" advanced organisms respond to our environment. "We" invent 
> earth and heavens, philosophy,  civilization and science. "We" call these 
> analogues reality and "we" mesmerize "our" children. "We ..create the world 
> in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it."
> 
> 
> "The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as 
> ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the 
> Neandertal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, 
> transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge 
> that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that 
> one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one 
> pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is."  --ZAMM, Ch. 28
> 
> "There is only one kind of person, Phædrus said, who accepts or rejects the 
> mythos in which he lives. And the definition of that person, when he has 
> rejected the mythos, Phædrus said, is "insane." To go outside the mythos is 
> to become insane."  ---ZAMM, Ch. 28
> 
> 
> To say that you or Marsha have your own logic is to say that you are insane, 
> that you have un-geared yourself from the common lot of humanity and suffer 
> in lonely solipsistic misery.  ...Hey, maybe you're right after all.

djh responds:
I'm perplexed dmb.. If you look at the very next sentence that I wrote I 
actually agree with your underlying point here..

djh wrote previously..
"So - further to this - that we are all 'cultures of one' doesn't mean though 
that we can't communicate or agree about the logic or illogic of something..  
It is our *shared* cultural values which allow us to do that..  " 

So to have your own logic is not to say that you are insane… everyone has their 
own unique logic depending on their own unique cultural values.. I'll put it 
another way - like all the gains of sand on the planet - everyone is unique and 
has their own unique set of cultural values - but like all the gains of sand on 
the planet - there will be parts of those grains which are the same - and thus 
there are cultural values which are shared between different people..  Thus - 
how 'sane' or 'insane' someone is will depend on how many values they share 
with the culture of which they are a part..

So back to my larger point - if we are to ever understand anyone - we need to 
understand what they value - regardless of the logic they use because our logic 
follows our values.. Yes we cannot understand something intellectual without 
using logic - but it is our values first - then our logic, not the other way 
around..


"Trying to understand a member of another culture is impossible without taking 
into account differences in value. If a Frenchman asks, 'How can Germans stand 
to live the way they do?' he will get no answer as long as he applies French 
values to the question. If a German asks, 'How can the French stand to live the 
way they do?' he will get no answer as long as he applies German values to the 
question. When we ask how could the Victorians stand to live in the 
hypocritical and superficial way they did, we cannot get a useful answer as 
long as we superimpose on them twentieth-century values that they did not have.

If one realizes that the essence of the Victorian value pattern was an 
elevation of society above everything else, then all sorts of things fall into 
place."
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