From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Dec 01 2005 - 15:28:06 GMT
> [Arlo]
> So, hypothetically, if Diana had been killed in a tragic car accident when
> she was young, there would be no discussion forum for the MOQ? I dunno,
> Platt, it seems pretty obvious that one would have emerged. Or perhaps, in
> Platt speak, I could say the MD always existed, floating in space, for
> billions of years, waiting for the levels to "flower", so that it could
> finally manifest itself.
Speculative. But, someone had to be first regardless of the scenario you
dream up. It wasn't one of your communes that started the MD. It was an
individual named Diana.
> Sadly, what you continue to miss in your illusive quest for the Randian
> isolated "creator" is that Diana's "creation" would not only have not been
> possible without the collective consciousness and ongoing historical
> dialogue (of which it further enables), but that according to Pirsig's
> evolutionary MOQ, higher levels "use" lower level organisms for their own
> end. The MOQ, as an Intellectual level organism, would likely have found a
> way to maintain a dialogue even in the absense of any one precious
> "creator".
Oh? How would your "intellectual organism" have found a way without
someone to kick start it?
> Just as social level organisms use biological level organisms,
> so do Intellectual organisms use social level ones, as Pirsig says, "in the
> way a farmer uses a chicken". But of course you miss this, you red blood
> cell you, spending all your time shouting "Rand says there is nothing
> higher than me!", while all around you the MOQ is happening, emerging from
> the collective activity of social beings, as part of what Pirsig calls "the
> collective consciousness of all communicating mankind", owing to many,
> evolving because of many, and emergent as something greater than any "one".
As pointed out in another post, the idea of intellectual "organisms" is
solely a creation of Arlo's fervid imagination.
> Diana is a voice in that choir, as is Horse, as are you, as am I (although
> my singing voice is pretty aweful). Our "individual" voices are like
> individual red-blood cells. The MOQ is the emergent "body"
A choir doesn't form itself. Someone had to initiate it, start it up, get
it going, audition applicants, choose a choirmaster, etc., etc. Choirs
don't magically emerge in the chancel while the congregation watches awe-
struck at the miracle.
> Some
> "individual" voices may indeed be keystone species (heart cells), while
> others carry the strength to alter the entire organism (DNA), while others
> still are not keystone, but peripheral voices, adding color and life. But
> from all these voices emerges the MOQ. Which, if you believe the MOQ, is an
> organism with a life of its own, as the Giant emerges from biological
> activity, the MOQ emerges from social activity.
You seem fascinated by biological metaphors. I wonder what their
attraction is for you?
Be that as it may, the MOQ did not emerge from "all these voices" but from
one voice, that of Robert Pirsig. Nor is it a biological organism. It's a
metaphysics.
Platt
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