Hi All, There's a grain of truth in Arlo's view of the individual vs. society -- maybe two grains. But completely and sadly overlooked (or ignored) is the role of the significant individual who changes society, whether he be Washington, Lincoln, Reagan or the brujo. Without such singular movers and shakers societies would stagnate (as some have to this day) and we would still be nomadic wanderers dressed in buffalo skins and hunting with spears. The essential role of the individual in the evolution towards social betterness finds expression in Lila with Pirsig's story of the brujo. In the following passage take special note of the fundamental cause of societal evolution: "A tribe can change its values only person by person and someone has to be first." Some PERSON that is, not an amorphous intellectual abstraction such as "collective consciousness."
[Pirsig] "The brujo's values were in conflict with the tribe at least partly because he had learned to value some of the ways of the new neighbors and they had not. He was a precursor of deep cultural change. A tribe can change its values only person by person and someone has to be first. Whoever is first obviously is going to be in conflict with everybody else. He didn't have to change his ways to conform to the culture only because the culture was changing its ways to conform to him. And that is what made him seem like such a leader. Probably he wasn't telling anyone to do this or to do that so much as he was just being himself." (Lila, 9) Note in Arlo's post below that he cites several individuals who he considers conspicuously above the herd in the field of sociology. > [Arlo] > Hi, Ron. This isn't quite what I was saying. I don't think > "intellect" has anything to do with "individuals" or "societies" > other than it is what emerges out of the social dialogue of > individuals. This is what Pirsig refers to when he points out that > intellect is always socially mediated, that it has been a "myth of > independence" that says the "world of objects imposes itself upon the > mind" free from social mediation. > > There are many sections in LILA that lend support to this, not only > from the overall MOQ levels themselves (from inorganic we get > biological, from biological we get social, and from social we get > intellectual), but also in his support that "what a mind thinks is... > dominated by social patterns" and the critical observation that "our > intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived". > > This is where the Ham's and Platt's of the world, who envision a > lone, autonomous agent, skipping among the flowers, valuing or > devaluing devoid of social "interference". Certainly a lone, > autonomous agent would be capable of responding to biological > quality, all we have to do is watch our pets to see evidence of that. > My dog is keenly aware of when it itches, or hungers, or is > comfortable, or not. But intellection requires FIRST the individual > to have assimilated what Pirsig refers to as "the collective > consciousness". And only after this enculturation, and through this > enculturation, is the "individual" able to respond to intellectual > patterns. And this is NOT, as Pirsig cautions, a non-structuring process. > > The key argument in sociology (in my humble opinion) over the past > century has been in articulating this enculturating process. Vygotsky > examined and theorized about the internalization of culture, what is > often referred to as assimilation, and spoke of the dialectic between > the specific, unique micro-genetic experiences of the individual as > they become represented through this enculturation process. Others, > as Giddens and Archer have argued respectively, have theorized about > how "agency" and "structure" are related, arguing that they are > inverse, mutually-dependent forces (perhaps akin to DQ and SQ). The > thing to remember with these theories is that they are not positing a > lone autonomous agent bucking heads with society. For both Giddens > and Archer (I believe), agency was enabled by structure, just as > structure is derived from agency. > > So when Platt quotes Pirsig, "[intellect] is the collection and > manipulation of symbols, created in the brain, that stand for > patterns of experience", one has to recall that for Pirsig this > "collection" and "manipulation" is socially-mediated. It derives from > the social level. And with that recollection in mind (pun intended), > we can see how intellect is the point of confluence between > individual agents and social activity. It is not about the value of > the "individual/social divide", but rather about the value of the > "individual/social merging". 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/
