[Krimel]
But not one single individual's contribution has ever amounted to
diddly squat unless others in the community thought it worthwhile.
[Platt]
What utter and complete nonsense. Nobody but Frank Llogd Wright and
his client thought his plans for Falling Water was worth diddly squat.
[Arlo]
Why do you bother, Krimel? Platt's pedantic view will never be
anything more than the Good Individual versus the Evil Society. For
him, "individual" and "collective" are unrelated, and in fact,
oppositional forces. Its like arguing climatology with someone whose
view of the weather consists only of "Sunny=Good, Rainy=Bad". You can
get into all the nuances, intricacies, codependancies and
inter-relatedness all you want, but the extent of your "thoughtful"
reply will always be, "hey commie Krimel, stop trying to enslave us
sunny-lovers with your rainy day liberal propaganda".
I'd submit that, as you say, its never "individual opposed to
collective", but "individuals engaged in collective activity". To
present the two as a rehashed "God/Satan" story is simply inane.
Agency-to-act, "free will", is both enabled and constrained by the
evolving dance between "individual patterns" and the collective
tapestry they weave as they dance around. Wright's very ability to
conceive of, symbolically plan, and draw upon a collective resource
pool to complete, would be inconceivable outside a collective
dialogue. To paraphrase Pirsig, "Twentieth century American culture
exists, therefore Wright plans, therefore Falling Water exists". And
even this should be expanded by saying, "Twentieth century American
culture exists, therefore a shared collective knowledge base
compromising aesthetics, architectural design, art, science,
carpentry, materials engineering, division of labor, economic
exchange, and a multitude of other collective resources exists,
therefore Wright was able to respond to the ongoing architectural
dialogue, therefore others were able to respond to Wright, therefore
Falling Waters was conceived, planned, financed and built, owing not
to One but to Many, a magnificent work of art evidencing the beauty
of a shared and evolving aesthetic dialogue in American Culture."
Voices are always a part of an ongoing narrative, inseparable from
it. And while the narrative structures what any one voice can say, it
is the narrative that also bestows the freedom to speak. It is
unavoidably enabling and constraining. To quote Sinatra, "You can't
have one without the other".
[Krimel]
Societies are not either individualistic or collective They are both.
[Arlo]
Exactly. Societies are individuals-in-collective-activity. And just
as the individual internalizes (assimilates) the collective (indeed,
becomes an agenic individual as a result), so to does the collective
internalize the individual. Metaphor: Eshers' hand drawing the hand
that is, in turn, drawing it. The very agency bestowed on the
individual by the structure of the collective are the seeds by which
that structure changes.
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