From: Marco (marble@inwind.it)
Date: Tue Nov 12 2002 - 18:42:21 GMT
(temporary lurking mode: OFF)
Hi Sam,
I'm glad you agree with my 25 July 2001 post.
As you maybe have noted, I've not been ...active on the list lately. Just
yesterday, while taking a look over the >1000 recent posts, I stumbled
across your 31 October message. So here is a brief and tardy message, not
really an answer as I could not read all the posts in the -very interesting-
"Sophocles" thread. Just some sparse thoughts about "individuality".
In my opinion, the individual is a sort of by-product of a social
environment. It sounds strange to many, as the common way of thinking is
that a society is a sum of individuals, but it's not so strange from a
Pirsigian viewpoint, where the basic component of everything is Quality. A
society is not really composed of individuals, rather it is composed of
shared values, also known as culture. Up to the third level, the individual
does not exist. In other words, in order to be an excellent component of a
social group (think of bees, for example) it is not necessary for a
biological being to be aware of its individuality, and/or fight for its own
freedom or right to dignity. Note that I don't identify at all the
biological being with the individual. For example, my ideas and my culture
are part of my individuality, but not part of my biological being that
simply *supports* all that. To a certain extent, even when the biological
being dies, the individual still exists: I can listen to Sophocles, even if
he is not alive. Just, without the necessary biological support, the
individual rests ...frozen. It doesn't evolve, yet it doesn't disappear
completely.
It heavily depends on our culture if we develop our individuality. It
happened many times - since the invention of the division of labor, up to
the recently developed "western culture" - that those cultures which
encouraged the development of a certain degree of individuality could gain
more strength than those that don't. In this positive-sum-game we have both
an higher quality society and a totally new kind of pattern, not biological,
not social. The Self. The individual that becomes aware of its ideas and
fights for the right to defend and express them.
Indeed, this individual draws a line between *himself* and *the rest of the
world*, a line that -as said- will contain what I consider part of my
identity: I think that my motorcycle is within that line, for example.
Where I part from Bo's SOLAQI is that I think that the intellectual level is
not merely about drawing that line. It is also recognizing that according to
the circumstances I can enlarge that line up to enclose all universe; or
that my line is crossing through the other's lines, so that in the end the
self is artificial. Someone would say it is illusion... ok, if only they can
tell me what is reality....
Back to individuality, in short I see it as that *something* that there
wasn't (up to the third level) and that now is there.... In this sense, it
is a 4th level pattern. Yet, it is not IMO the 4th level. A common criticism
is that science is largely made of team working. Even if on the other hand I
have to point out that it is not strictly necessary to work in team in order
to be a scientist, I basically agree. But let me say that a team of
scientists is anyway a social entity. They share a common culture (the
scientific method, their basic mathematical knowledge) and they have roles
within the team. In this, I don't find a difference between them and a
group of prehistoric hunters, or even a pack of wolves. The difference is
that the insights that lead their experiments are necessarily individual,
and directly proportional with the individual passion for their work: if you
don't *love* physics, you can't be a great physicist. So while the hunters
and the wolves were leaded by their biological needs, the scientist are
leaded by their individuality. Then, as the 4th level is not blind to the
values of the lower levels, it becomes easy to take something that
demonstrated its validity throughout history (social cooperation) and apply
it to attain some 4th level goal. Science borrowed team working, did not
invent it.
But even if IMO individuality is necessary to a high quality intellectual
pursuit, it can be also dangerous. Its degeneration, individualism, is IMO
the form of individuality that disdains the social level, the child that
kills the parents, using Pirsig's words. The right way is that *positive
game* I mentioned in which I help my social environment and my social
environment repays me allowing me the greatest possible freedom to follow my
personal interests. From this viewpoint, I put -as always- art at the same
level with science. The great artist, while following his own passions, is
able to communicate "something" to the others. And actually he becomes
"great" only when the others get "something".
In conclusion, individuality is that catalyser that made it possible for the
4th level to start with a purpose of his own, and without it the 4th level
IMO disappears as well. I also had the temptation to call the 4th level
*individual*. I think Pirsig called it *intellectual* as indeed in that
positive game with the lower level science has demonstrated the greatest
capacity of responding to the social needs, so it was science that first was
able to gain the role of *leader of evolution*. But let's not forget that
Pirsig himself ends the SODAV paper (written after Lila) stating that:
« In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance art was defined as high
quality endeavor. I have never found a need to add anything to that
definition. But one of the reasons I have spent so much time in this paper
describing the personal relationship of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in
the development of quantum theory is that although the world views science
as a sort of plodding, logical methodical advancement of knowledge, what I
saw here were two artists in the throes of creative discovery. They were at
the cutting edge of knowledge plunging into the unknown trying to bring
something out of that unknown into a static form that would be of value to
everyone. As Bohr might have loved to observe, science and art are just two
different complementary ways of looking at the same thing. In the largest
sense it is really unnecessary to create a meeting of the arts and sciences
because in actual practice, at the most immediate level they have never
really been separated. They have always been different aspects of the same
human purpose. »
After this words, I think that either we consider also art as part of the
Q-intellectual level -and this seems the Pirsig's position-, or we take
another word to enclose both art and science. I'd not use "individual", as I
agree with many that it could sound to many too much in opposition versus
the social level. Pirsig talks of "creative discovery" and of "cutting edge
of knowledge" so we could call it the level of discovery, or the level of
knowledge. Of course, more than the about the term, it is important that we
agree on what we mean......
Ciao,
Marco
(temporary lurking mode: ON)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Elizaphanian" <Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: MD Sophocles not Socrates
> Hi Wim, all (especially Marco),
>
> It's both humbling and exciting to fully realise that my 'campaign' is not
> particularly original. True it was pointed out that the thought had been
> round the block before, and I still think it was worth pushing the boat
out
> again, but I was struck by this passage from Marco, Jul25 2001 (just after
I
> joined).
>
> "I think that the idea of the self (the very first intellectual pattern,
> parent of all the S/O thinking, and parent of the Socrates' "Gnothi Se
> Auton" and of the Descartes "Cogito" and of the Bill of Human Rights.... )
> came out not from language, but in those societies where the division of
> labor has determined that it was "good" for someone to be isolated for
some
> times in order to perform some social duty."
>
> I largely agree with this (I don't agree that it is the Cogito). What I
was
> originally arguing about as the 'individual' is I think what Marco is here
> referring to as the self, and it is dependent on a particular social
> structure to develop.
>
> Lots of things to muse on!
>
> Sam
> www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
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