From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Sat Nov 26 2005 - 00:23:47 GMT
[Platt]
Well, at least you admit the existence of individuals. That's a start.
[Arlo]
Never denied it. You're the only one who makes it an "either or" discussion.
[Platt]
Now there's a mouthful from an individual named Arlo, who I dare say,
spoke thus like no one else in the history of mankind.
[Arlo]
Not at all. In my words one can hear the echo of all the historical voices I've
been able to appropriate, from Peirce to Pirsig, from Incan myths to Quantum
Physics. Without these, Arlo would not only not have anything to say, but would
not be able to speak.
Every time you speak, I can hear Rand, and Pirsig, and the countless voices that
make up the little dialogue in your head. You think you think in isolation and
with no one elses words, but you are quite wrong.
[Platt]
As yes, the magical "emergent," the great "oops" of the inexplicable.
Reminds me of "It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly there was a
scream."
[Arlo]
If you are so anti-emergence, why are you so fond of an emergentist metaphysical
hierarchy?
[Platt]
Surely you can do better in telling your story about how ideas materialize than
Snoopy. And while you're at it, perhaps you can tell me what collective mind
first drew the curves that defined Snoopy on a piece of paper.
[Arlo]
And without the culture, and the historical legacy of the collective
consciousness, not only would Shulz have had no voice to conceptualize Snoopy,
but no paper, no pen and no social dialogue for his characters.
Snoopy exists not because Shulz existed, but because the 20th century American
collective consciousness existed, in which Shulz emerged, and through
collaborative activity with others around him was Shulz able to actualize
Snoopy.
Glorify Shulz in Randian icing all you want, its like glorifing a red blood cell
for creating the human body. Without "individual red blood cells" the human
body would not exist, sure, but without collectivization on the part of those
cells, the emergent human body, a higher organism than the red blood cell, the
human body also would not exist.
[Platt]
But you cannot escape the fact that Descartes said it, not a committee,
bureau, department, council, commission, jury, conference, convention,
fraternity, parliament, commune, pow wow or group of any kind. One man,
alone, declaring independence from the social level, just as Pirsig, one man
alone, burning the midnight oil in his study, accompanied only by his
faithful dog, Rigel, asleep at his feet, putting pen to paper to declare, "A
tribe can change its values only person by person and someone has to be first."
(Lila, 9).
[Arlo]
Sure Descartes said it. But not alone. Only through the appropriation of the a
socially constructed collective consciousness that was 19th century French
culture. It takes two to tango, and without the collective Descartes would have
nothing to say.
You keep misrepresenting the "collective consciousness" as something like a
"group of people". Thankfully, Pirsig proved he knew what it truly is, saying,
"Religion isn’t invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent
responses to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what
they themselves are. You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and
then you try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you’ve got to
work with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know.
It’s an analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can’t be anything
else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The
mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the
collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it."
You can keep saying "A man said it and not a committee", but all that does is
show you don't understand what Pirsig was getting at. That "man" is an
dialectic participant in the historical and temporal dialogue that is the
collective consciousness. Descartes said it only by virtue of this collective.
Without the 19th century French culture (the collective consciousness
appropriated by Descartes), Descartes would have been able to say nothing, let
alone have "an idea".
[Platt]
My hero, the "someone," the "active catalytic agent."
[Arlo]
Who in isolation from the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind
is "noone". With no voice. With no thoughts. With no words. Hardly capable of
being anything other than a biological entity.
You worship the day, I worship the circadian rhythm that is sunrise-sunset. You
worship a note, I worship the symphony. You worship the red blood cell, I
worship the emergent product of cell collective activity.
Individual-collective. Forever intertwined and only separable by illusion and
charlantism. Whose dialectic gives rise to emergent higher-level organisms, who
we then call "individual" (at that level), who again through a dialectic
activity with the collective gives rise to yet another level.
Arlo
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 26 2005 - 00:36:49 GMT