From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 01 2005 - 20:38:04 BST
Just wanted to quickly interject...
[Ham wrote]
>At the same time (and at least as important to me) there is a need to
>establish the role of the "individual" in the Quality thesis. I'm
>constantly troubled by the assertions made here that individuality is of
>minor consequence, that conscious awareness arises as a byproduct of
>Nature's evolution to higher levels of complexity, that the individual self
>is a meaningless abstraction whose choices and will to act are mere
>reflections of the "intellectual culture" from which it emerges. This
>reminds me of Sartre's thoughtless comment that "man is 'unnecessary' ...the
>world exists just as well without him."
This type of "crisis" appears to only be a "crisis" for someone who can't
accept that Randian Individualism has no place in the MOQ. There have been
several threads on this topic, including one where I tried to demonstrate
that the symbiotic-dialectic between the "individual" and the "collective"
does not place precedence of one over the other, but this does not equate
to the "devaluation of the individual" decried by the Ayn Rand crowd (see
MD: Intellect as Consciousness, and MD Collective Consciousness).
That said, the reason (perhaps) that no one is rushing in to solve the
"problem of the individual in the MOQ" is that only Randians see a problem
here. In other words, its not a crisis, just a thorn in the side of the
Stand Alone Genius mythologists. :-)
Arlo
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