Ron/Dan/Ant/All, Although somewhat old (by today's standards), and one I think I've referred to in the past, a good article entitled "Who am We?" that appeared in Wired Magazine can be read at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.01/turkle.html
Tangentally related, perhaps, it draws from the view of the "self" as a fluid, negotiated, social construct that exists only in the space between two (or more) people, and is structured and conditioned by cultural conceptualizations of the "self'. Or, perhaps better stated, the trajectory from the selfish ego-boundrilessness to selfless ego-boundrilessness is one traversed through social channels. And the end result of this journey is forever shaped by the linguistic, cultural, social and historical structures of that social world. In ZMM, for example, Pirsig pointed to the root-alienation of modern life in the S/O metaphysical nature of Western Culture. An alientation that although rooted with the Ancient Greeks, for Pirsig becomes critical only after the era of mass-production. That aside, the underlying premise, echoed in LILA, is that all our concepts, including the "self" concept, is born, bred and rooted in the socio-cultural milieu. Despite Platt's ridiculous attempt to make it an Evil Mao versus Holy Bush argument, this strong attachment to the self (the "small self" of Buddhism) is something not nearly so pronounced in many other world cultures. At that point its important to back up and recognize that our concept of "self" has excellent historical pragmatic ramifications, but over-attachment is as dangerous and under-attachment. I am certainly no expert on Buddhism, but I recommend looking in the Buddhist notion of "anatta". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta Arlo Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
