From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Dec 06 2005 - 16:48:43 GMT
Arlo:
Thanks for the explanation of how you see the difference between
collective consciousness and society. Frankly, I can't tell the difference
as everything you attribute to the collective consciousness (shared
historical, symbolically represented experiences within a culture) is
also attributable to society. Nor do I imply in using the word society (or
commune) a particular group of people existing at a particular time and
place, any more than I imply that social patterns are restricted to one
country or another. Anyway, just as intellectual patterns are at a higher
moral level than social patterns.I see individuals at a higher moral level
than societies (or systems) and hold them, rather than society,
responsible for their moral behavior. That alone in my mind is enough to
place individuals separate and above the social milieu they inhabit.
Otherwise, the words like "criminal," "insane," and "role model" have no
meaning.
If metaphors must be used to describe our place in the cosmos, the one I
prefer is from Aziz Nasafi:
"On the death of any living creature the spirit returns to the spiritual
world, the body to the bodily world. In this, however, only the body is
subject to change. The spiritual world is one single spirit who stands
like unto light behind the bodily world and who, when any single creature
comes into being, shines through it as through a window. According to the
kind and size of the window, less or more light enters the world. The
light itself, however, remains unchanged."
Pirsig's light shines brightly indeed.
Platt
[Platt]
> Perhaps before going any further you could clear up the difference between
> "society" and "collective." I don't see how why a "collective" of
> individuals doesn't equate to a "society" of individuals. In other words,
> what's the difference between "collective consciousness" and "social
> consciousness?"
>
> [Arlo]
> Well, using your words above I don't think there is a difference. But there
> is a difference between "collective consciousness" and "society". The
> "collective consciousness" is formed historically, over time, from living
> beings communicating socially. Pirsig equates with language, but what one
> has to understand is that language just doesn't "name things", but gives us
> the very foundation for thought. In this sense, the "collective
> consciousness" could be thought of as the "shared historical, symbolically
> represented experiences within culture".
>
> When an "individual living being" is born into culture, and appropriates
> this "collective consciousness", it is NOT a matter of a separate
> intelligence simply listening to the voices of others. That "individual
> living being's" first thoughts ARE the voices of others. And, over time,
> those voices structure the way that being's "individual" immediate
> experiences are cataloged. The "individual" (as the software program) comes
> into being by the act of internalizing, or appropriating, the voices of
> others.
>
> These voices are, to be sure, not necessarily "marked" as the "voice of
> anyone in particular". Indeed, most of these voices are not. When Pirsig
> says that "This Cartesian "Me" is a software reality, not a hardware
> reality. This body on the left and this body on the right are running
> variations of the same program, the same "Me," which doesn't belong to
> either of them. The "Me's" are simply a program format.", this is what he
> is getting at. "Me" is a feature of the collective consciousness that has
> emerged as it is over historical time, maybe not even deliberately, and yet
> we see it as some sort of objective reality. It is not, it is a socially,
> historically evolved part of our collective consciousness, that is a part
> of the software program running in our heads, that in turn structures the
> way our immediate experience is cataloged (or symbolically represented).
>
> When Pirsig says that he and Lila, or Platt and Arlo, are "variations of
> the same program, the same "Me," which doesn't belong to either of them",
> he is saying that "his consciousness" and "Lila's consciousness" are not
> wholly distict, but "variations" (due to immediate individual experience)
> of the "same program" (the collective consciousness).
>
> "Society" (or "commune") implies a particular set of social patterns,
> existing in a particular definable historical moment. The "collective
> consciousness" is not contained by any society, but stretches through
> societies over historical time. "Commune", even more so, implies the
> deliberate actions of a select group of people. If you wanted to use
> another word for collective consiousness, or social consciousness, I
> suppose "culture" would do, but that word has specific associations these
> days that would have to be dealt with, or "mythos", providing one
> understands that this is more than simpley a library of myths. It is, as
> Pirsig says, the "mythos" from which the "me" originates.
>
> Maybe that helps a bit, maybe not. But for now, work bekons...
>
> Arlo
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