From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Dec 05 2005 - 13:55:58 GMT
> [Platt]
> I don't think either you or I or any human being was there at the
> beginning. But consciousness was. Does that clarify my position?
>
> [Arlo]
> Did "you" and "I" emerge from this same consciousness? Are we completely
> separate from it now?
"Emerge?" You do love that word don't you? I would put it another way. We
were both born into consciousness (Quality), both knew the same
consciousness shortly thereafter, but as we developed had different life
experiences that gradually changed the particularity of our consciousness. We
soon recognized we were separate individuals who could never know another's
consciousness, only that we were conscious.
> [Platt]
> The key word is "share." As Pirsig points out, everyone has a different
> (individual) life experience. But sharing does not make for a collective
> experience, e.g., you'll never know what it's like to be kissed by you.
>
> [Arlo]
> We have different "individual" experiences, but the collective
> consciousness that unites "all communicating mankind" provides a collective
> of common (symbolic) experience. And not only that, but the "collective
> consciousness" makes possible and structures what your "individual"
> experience catalogs.
I do not consider language representative of "collective consciousness"
because there are thousands of different languages, but only one
consciousness. Nor is there any uniting of "all communicating mankind"
because there's no such thing as a universal language except mathematics
which, except at a very primitive level, is beyond the ken of most of
mankind (including most of all, me).
> [Platt]
> Yes, we agree. Except "evolution" wasn't following DQ. Individuals were --
> whether atoms, molecules, organelles, ants or chimps. And someone had to be
> first. Then change, evolution, occurred.
>
> [Arlo]
> An individual molecule emerges as the result of collective inorganic
> activity (atoms). An individual chimp emerges as the result of collective
> activity on the part of molecules. On any given MOQ level, yes, there are
> individuals (who are formed from collective activity on the previous
> level). Social level individuals emerge from collective biological
> activity, intellectual level individuals emerge from collective social
> level activity.
Yes, once set in motion, collective activity creates. But some singular
event was first, whether the Big Bang, carbon bonding or inventing a
Metaphysics of Quality.
> You worship of the "individuals" on one layer ignores that their collective
> activity gives rise to the evolution of a higher level. Yes, individuals do
> act. But out of their collective activity greater things emerge than any
> one individual acting alone. Such as calculus, or the MOQ.
I don't consider a painting by Turner to have emerged from collective
activity. For paintings of collective activity, go look at graffiti.
Similarly, I don't consider Einstein's relativity theory to have resulted
from collective activity. For theories from collective activity, read
policy statements of the National Education Association.
>> [Platt]
> I'm not talking about "ability to be first." I'm talking about being
> first. Everything and everybody has the ability. But it's the one, single,
> solitary "someone" who actually does it that makes the difference.
>
> [Arlo]
> Except there is no such thing as a single, solitary "someone". Pirsig did
> not author the MOQ alone. He had a lot of help. It is only simplistic
> cultural custom to attribute the work "solely to one person".
Yes, I guess it's simplistic of academe to give PhD's solely to one
person.
> [Platt]
> I think you have a distorted sense of the "Randian sense." Nowhere did
> Rand say that other people weren't around when an individual created
> something new. Mostly they got in the way.
>
> [Arlo]
> If this is Rands position, I think its apparent, then, why Rand is ignored
> by the Academy.
No more so than Pirsig. So I guess by your lights Pirsig and Rand are
equally unworthy.
> [Platt]
> See, there goes your commune thinking again. Does systems ecology tell you
> anything about an individual wolf? Or just "wolves" in general? Does not
> your ecology also say that deer have to "harvested" at times to preserve
> the ecology? What of the concern for the individual then?
>
> [Arlo]
> Odd criticism from someone who favors killing human beings to preserve
> static social patterns. Isn't the war in Iraq about killing individuals to
> protect "society"?
Gee, you're the one that says all comes from the collective. If that's so,
don't you think the collective ought to be protected?
> Systems ecology would answer you charge with the words
> of the MOQ. When an ecology is threatened by the actions of individual
> deer, then it is moral to kill the deer to preserve the ecology. But, when
> the actions of individual deer are not threatening the ecology, it is not
> moral to kill individual deer (or individual wolves).
When a deer or a wolf responds to DQ, let me know. The words of MOQ you
latch onto apply specifically to human beings. Anyway, how do you know
which individual deer or wolf out of the hundreds involved deserves to be
killed? Are there criminals among the deer or wolf populations that can be
singled out?
> [Platt]
> Now you're talking. Tell me. Why does destroying an individual have an
> impact on society? Could it be you are making my point about the vital
> importance of the individual, the first to mutate, the first to look at the
> heavens through a telescope, the first to write a metaphysics based on the
> premise that reality is Quality?
>
> [Arlo]
> Destroying an individual has an impact on society the same way killing my
> DNA would have an impact on my body. On the biological level, I need
> individual DNA's ability to respond to DQ on the biological level. The
> "individual" (using your simplistic rendition of the word) is valued in the
> MOQ because "he" is the DNA of the social level. Killing individual people
> weakens society's ability to evolve, the same way killing individual cells
> weakens my body.
There's something really scary about comparing people to DNA. Isn't DNA
being mutilated and otherwise manipulated by scientists?
> [Platt]
> Well, if you want to compare people to raindrops, so be it. It would never
> occur to me -- and I hope to very few others -- to propose an analogy in
> which people are compared to drops of rain. Why not just think of us as no
> more than grains of sand and be done with it?
>
> [Arlo]
> Oh, heaven forbid we use any metaphor for humans that doesn't trumpet the
> Great and Glorious Manifest Divine Destiny of the Human Individual, of whom
> nothing is Higher, nothing Greater, nothing more Splendid and Important.
> Man, the Supreme Individual! The Zenith of Evolution! The Nadir of
> Importance! Nothing is Greater than "me"! The Randian Uebermensch!
Well, heaven forbid we make human beings metaphorically equivalent to
dirt. Rather, let us celebrate the individual as Shakespeare did:
"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in
faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how
like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals!"
I agree with the Bard.
Platt
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