Arlo said to Marsha: What I was trying to show is that "conformity" is not a feature of any one level, it is a feature of them all. Those who say "the social level is conformity, the intellectual level is freedom" are simply wrong. As I said, the thrust of ZMM was about the conformity of western intellectual patterns. Both the social level and the intellectual level afford the "individual" with certain freedoms, and both bring with it a force of conformity.
dmb says: Exactly. Both levels have static patterns with which we must more or less conform. Intellectuals can get excluded from the church of reason just as the social level Giant has its own protective immune system. In either case, it becomes a problem when the patterns are too static, too rigid but both also need stability. Both offer freedom from the constraints of the level below it and both of them accomplish this through the preserving power of static patterns. Growth and stability are features of all static patterns, its just that the higher levels have a greater capacity to change and grow, have increasingly open structures. Of course, a severe failure to conform at the social level will land you in jail or otherwise wreck your life and such a failure to conform at the intellectual level will land you in the looney bin or maybe just put you in a category called "stupid", but either way there is a price to pay. Just ask Ayn Rand. _________________________________________________________________ Stay in touch when you're away with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_messenger2_072008 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/
