Not good, not bad

Robert Pirsig died a couple of weeks ago; he's the guy that wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  After reading it (for the first time) I bought a motorcycle myself.  I bring this up because there has been a nagging thought in the back of my mind regarding some of the recent discussions and the questions that have been asked, questions that I don't think can be answered.  For some reason, the phrase "unask the question" kept occurring to me, so I did a Google search, and what do you know, there was a link to an article by Pirsig.  That phrase has been simmering in the back of my mind for more than forty years but it comes to mind when the nature of good and bad, relativism vs. absolutism are discussed.  The Japanese have a word for it: Mu.  Here's an excerpt:

Mu means "no thing." Like "quality" it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, "no class: not one, not zero, not yes, not no." It states that the context of the question is such that a yes and a no answer is in error and should not be given. "Unask the question" is what it says.

The full article is here: http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=583
 
So now I have a good answer for some of Uncle Ken's questions: I say MU!  But let me back up a little and say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, one man's meat is another man's poison, and that I'd rather use an ugly, but highly effective spear than a pretty spear that lacks utility.  De gustibus non est disputandum.

I think it's ironic that Louis Sullivan coined the phrase "form follows function."  Suppose he did design a beer glass.  It may look beautiful but I bet it would be a devil to clean.

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We won't really know if things are "better" for Native Americans until we ask them, but that reminds me of another subject that I put aside a while back.  Are you guys familiar with Cohokia?  It was a populous settlement in the St. Louis area, noted for many large mounds and was long gone by the time the Europeans arrived on our fair shores.  The National Geographic had a good article on it a few years back, and there's plenty of online reference material available if you find this sort of thing interesting.

While reading about Cohokia I was thinking that it's a pity that they didn't have a written language and we know very little about their lives.  But then I thought of the great Egyptian civilization which also didn't have a written language (as we know it) but used symbols in the form of hieroglyphics.  They did pretty well in the sciences, especially astronomy, mathematics, and geometry. but what were their classes like?   How did they verbally explain and  communicate with the symbols?  Sometimes I think that the way a human brain is "wired" depends on the culture.  Some folks just think differently.  I read once (don't remember where, but pre-internet) that Pacific Islanders navigated their canoes at night by listening to the sound of waves upon the island shores.  They didn't have a written language, either.  What did they know that we don't; can it even be taught to our modern minds without knowing their spoken language?  Maybe the answer is mu.