> [Platt] > Yes or no. Do you agree or disagree with this statement. Flat out answer > please. "A tribe can change its values only PERSON by PERSON and SOMEONE has > to be FIRST" i.e., ORIGINATE. > > [Arlo] > Yes. I've never disagreed with this. I just emphasize the process by which > that "person" achieves this agency to act, namely through the appropriation > of the collective unconscious and the bounded proprietary experience of > her/his being.
It is up to an individual, and only an individual, to break free from the influence of the "collective unconscious." Even if you are a hard core Darwinist you have to admit that natural selection only works at the individual level. > [Platt] > See meaning of "originate" explained above. > > [Arlo] > You explain nothing except say you "can't skip a level". According to my MW, > "originate" means "to come into being". We can look at the following three > quotes from Pirsig to see that is what he means. > > "The seventeenth century French culture exists, therefore I think... " > > "The seventeenth century French culture exists ... therefore I am." > > "Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate > out > of society". > > As you can see, Descates "comes into being" from the social level. He "is" > by virtue of this collective assimilation alongside his bounded proprietary > experience. He "thinks" because of culture. He "is" because of culture. According to Merriam-Webster, "originate" is defined as "give rise to." That's the meaning I use. Thus, the social level gave rise to Descartes and a million other French men and women, but the individual Descartes "is" and thinks" because of his unique combination of all four levels, much like his uniqe DNA. > So we take both, "A tribe can change its values only PERSON by PERSON" and > see that that "person" comes into being because of the tribe. Social and > individual. Collective and proprietary. That a tribe can change its values person by person has nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of those persons. Pirsig's description of how societal values change reinforces the key role of the LONE INDIVIDUAL in bringing about evolutionary progress -- which is why we celebrate individual creators like Plato, Aristotle, Pirsig and thousands of others in every field of endeavor. In our time Einstein is arguably the best example of the LONE INDIVIDUAL escaping from the culturally derived "collective unconscious" to change culture forevermore. > This ties exactly into the premise of the self I've been articulating, the > one drawn from the full MOQ context. The individual consisting of all four levels represents the full MOQ context. > "Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived". Note > he does not say "influenced". He says "always derived". Always. And he > doesn't say "individually derived". Here again we see the half of Pirsig you > ignore, the half that shows that the origins (and indeed content) of mind > are social. > > So, again, do you agree or disagree with each of these quotes. I've answered > you, now can you answer me? Or do you need to redefine "originate" in order > to with Pirsig? Merriam-Webster defines "derive" as used in this context as "to have or take origin." Which puts us back to the meaning of "originate" noted above. > When mental patterns originate out of society, Pirsig here is talking > directly about the assimilation of the collective consciousness. What make > each individual different in that this occurs side-by-side a bounded > existence. We are both social (where our mental patterns originate from) and > individual (experience unique to our boundedness). > > If you remove the social collective from the equation, no more "selves". No > more agency to act on the social OR intellectual levels. We would be nothing > more than biological animals. > > Thus the "self" is both "social" and "unique", both "collective" and > "proprietary". Indeed, it is a metaphoric contact-point between our social > assimilation and our unique experience as a bounded being. And all the > quotes I've given (and you've provided) supports that. As I have repeatedly said, each individual is influenced by the society he finds herself in. No argument about that. > And again, this is why you and Ham have such a laughable disagreement over > the MOQ. You each only see the half of the MOQ you want to see, blinded by > your war. And its why you so astonishingly use one quote from Pirsig to > refute another. Honestly, I have never seen anything like that in all my > days. Nor have I ever seen an academic so enamored of his own interpretation of a text as to be blind to any other. But, I guess that's what makes them academics. > Now I am done. Me, too. 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/
