From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Sep 04 2005 - 23:48:12 BST
Welcome back from your ride, Arlo. Hope it was refreshing:
> [Platt]
> But, IMO your explanation can be summed up by saying "Individuals are
> influenced by culture" To that I have no disagreement.
>
> [Arlo]
> No. If you're summing up my explanation, it'd be correct to say
> "Individuals exist only through culture". To that I have no disagreement.
Hooray. Individuals exist. Glad you see that.
> [Platt]
> Hooray. You acknowledge the existence of and the essential role of a
> "particular individual" that I have been talking about all along. The
> "collective pool of knowledge" you speak of arose from a myriad of
> individual contributions over time. The source of each and every idea in
> the collective pool was (and is) an individual human being, just as the
> source of water in a pool is individual molecules of H2O.
>
> [Arlo]
> But do we privilege individual molecules of H20 over the water? Nope.
You darn well better if you want water. Without those little buggers,
you'd get mighty thirsty mighty fast.
> I have never had any comment about the value of the "individual" as a
> potential source of evolution. On ANY of the MOQ levels.
Does that mean you acknowledge the individual's important role in
evolution?.
> On the biological level individuals are need to have sex to propagate the
> species.
>
> On the social level individuals are needed to hold the hammers that build
> the cities.
Individuals are needed to invent hammers, manufacture hammers, and decide
where to put the nails.
> On the intellectual level individuals are needed to propagate the
> Mythos-Logos.
Individuals are needed to create the word that others spread..
> But, each of the levels exists as a collective amalgamation of the activity
> of individuals. And, each of the levels "use" the individuals on the
> previous level to further its own goals.
The intellectual level doesn't use individuals so much as protect them
from society's (government's) efforts to dominate them.
> [Platt]
> Maybe its roots go way back to some individual thinkers in the dim past as
> Pirsig suggests. But no one before him put it all together in Western
> philosophy.
>
> [Arlo]
> Hooray. You recognize it was a dialogic effort involving more than one
> "individual". It was many voices, from the past and from the present,
> anticipating voices from the future. It was dialogic, not monologic.
>
> Like the brujo, Pirsig exists through his culture, with the appropriated
> voices of the past, and is ABLE to be a catalyst ONLY BECAUSE OF THE
> CULTURE. Reworded, they are voices in an ongoing dialogue, not individuals
> making some Randian soliloquy.
Hooray. You acknowledge the individual catalyst, the brujo, the Randian
and Pirsigian hero.
> You always take this to mean I deny the "particular individual". I think
> this is because of the monologic privilege Rand places on the stand alone
> thinker. I don't deny the "particular individual", never have, I simply see
> her/him for what s/he is, a voice in a greater chorus that spans past,
> present and future, able to sing only through the appropriation of a
> culture's voice.
I've never denied the influence of culture on the individual. But indeed I
do "privilege" (a favorite word of liberals) the individual soloist -- the
Louis Armstrong's, Rachmaninoff's and Pirsig's of this world.
> [Arlo previously]
> The MOQ is not monologic. It is dialogic. It exists only because of the
> combination of the "voices of the past" and the experiences of Pirsig in a
> social-culture. It continues to exist because it has been made part of the
> collective Intellectual dialogue, of which Pirsig and everyone else are a
> part of (well, except Rush Limbaugh).
>
> [Platt]
> Keep in mind that a "dialogue" necessitates the existence of at least two
> individuals, like you and Michael Moore..
>
> [Arlo]
> Exactly. You need at least "two". You're starting to get it. "One" just
> won't do much of anything.
And you're beginning to get it that you can't you have the many without
the one.
> [Platt]
> We hold the hammer of ideas which can destroy a society. And rightfully so.
>
> [Arlo]
> No individual can destroy society. The idea would have to spread throughout
> the collective intellectual level. The brujo succeeded only because of the
> spread through the collective. Who knows how many other brujos were killed
> or died or never made an impact. Think of Sidis, who may well have been a
> brujo, whose dialogic ideas simply never made it into the collective
> dialogue. If the MOQ influences the existing patterns of intellect it is
> not solely because of Pirsig. It is because of the dialogic nature of his
> thoughts, and the adoption and diffusion of those thoughts throughout
> others. One has to be first, but one does nothing alone.
The first one is the important one, not all the second-handers and hangers-
on. I celebrate the great ones in every field of human endeavor, not their
entourages. After all, Pirsig is only celebrated by a relative few. That
doesn't make him any less great. Truth, the sine qua non of intellect, is
not dependent on polls.
Platt
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