From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jun 20 2004 - 20:23:09 BST
Dear Wim, Platt and all MOQers:
I think both of you guys are sorely mistaken about this distinction, but for
entirely different reasons. Wim, for example, can at least see that his
version of the MOQ is not the same as Pirsig's while Platt seems to think
Pirsig is some kind of Ayn Randian Individualist. Watching the two of you
discuss the third and fourth level distinctions is like watching Stephen
Hawking and Edward Scissorhands teach each other to tie flies. No matter how
hard they try, it ain't gonna happen.
Platt wrote 17 June:
> 'My distinction [between power of the collective and 'freedom of the
> individual] is based on Pirsig's statement that only a living being (an
> individual) can respond to DQ, and that societies only change one person
at
> a time with someone (an individual) always first.
dmb says:
Only a living being can change society and a living being is an individual
and individuality is a feature of modern intellectual values, THEREFORE all
living beings are intellectual? Among the confusions and mistakes in Platt's
distinction perhaps the most important is the confusion between the word
"individual", which is used to designate a single entity, and modern
concepts like "individualism" and "individuality", which represent cultural
values.
Platt quotes Pirsig for support: (emphasis added)
And beyond that is an even more compelling reason; societies and thoughts
and principles themselves are no more than sets of static patterns. These
patterns can't by themselves perceive or adjust to Dynamic Quality. ONLY A
LIVING BEING CAN DO THAT. The strongest moral argument against capital
punishment is that it weakens a society's Dynamic capability-its
capability for change and evolution. It's not the "nice" guys who bring
about real social change. "Nice" guys look nice because they're
conforming. It's the "bad" guys, who only look nice a hundred years later,
that are the real Dynamic force in social evolution. That was the real
moral lesson of the brujo in Zuni. If those priests had killed him they
would have done great harm to their society's ability to grow and change.
(Lila, 13)
dmb continues:
The living being that comes first, that is the precursor of cultural change,
COULD be an intellectual and an individualist, but not necessarily and in
fact that has rarely and only recently been the case. Surely society evolved
in this same way for tens of thousands of years before the advent of
intellect, which Pirsig and many others place at about 500BCE. Surely it was
an individual living being who was the first to leave the caves or ride a
horse. How long has the social level been evolving? That's how long these
individual living beings acted as agents of social change, but our modern
ideas about individualism and the debate about "collectivity" (meaning
commies) and "individuality" (meaning "free market" capitalists) simply had
nothing to do with it. They couldn't have had anything to do with it because
they did not yet exist. This is the problem of confusing "a living being"
with the concept of individuality and all its ideological baggage.
dmb quotes Pirsig from CH 30:
"He could only guess how far back this ritual-comos relationship went, maybe
fifty or one hundred thousand years. Cave men are usually depicted as hairy,
stupid creatures who don't do much, but anthropological studies of
contemporary primitive tribes suggest that stone age people were probably
bound by ritual all day long. There's a ritual for washing, for putting up a
house, for hunting, for eating and so on - so much that the distinction
between ritual and knowledge becomes indistinct. In cultures without books
ritual seems to be a public library for teaching the young and preserving
common values and information."
dmb continues:
When it comes to the intellectual level, it should come as no surprise that
evolution proceeds in the same, by way of living beings. And at the
biological level, surely natural selection occurs only becasue living beings
are selecting naturally. Hey, even particals have preferences in the MOQ. My
point? Platt's "distinction" between the 3rd and 4th levels is actually a
very bad idea because the third and fourth level BOTH evolve by way of
living beings and always have. Its one of the things all levels have in
COMMON and is therefore the very antithesis of a good distinction. And for
Wim, I'd only ask how the social level could possibly be "unconscious" if it
meant hunting, eating and putting up a house? How is it possible to even
imagine that do such things unconsciously? (This is a rhetorical question.)
I guess that you have a very "special" definition of the word "unconscious".
"Rta. That's what was missing from her life. Ritual.
Arriving at work Monday morning is rta. Getting paid Friday evening is rta.
Walking into a grocery store to take food off the shelf to feed one's
children is rta. Paying for it with the money recieved on Friday is more
rta. The entire mechanism of society is rta from beginning to end. That's
what Lila really needed. He could only guess how far back this ritual-cosmos
relationship went, maybe fifty or one hundred thousand years. Cave men..."
dmb continues:
I've wanted to visit Amsterdam for a long time. Should I ever make it over
there, Wim, would it be OK if I went with you to the grocery store? I
imagine watching you shop and pay unconsciously would be great fun. And if
its not too much to ask, could I watch you eat unconsciously too?
Thanks,
dmb
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