John Carl stated to Dan Glover, Feb 28th 2014: > ...you can't have a culture, without individuals. Any more than you can have > any social pattern without biological being and support. An ongoing matter of > discussion, the way the levels interact. Platt has hung his hat on the idea > that the 4th level is the Individual level and I think the point could be > made that pure intellect is pure individualism.
Dave Buchanan responded Feb 28th 2014: You're getting this idea from Platt. It's a wrench in the gears for anyone trying to sort out the levels and it's not true, according to developmental psychologists and philosophers. Individuality is an achievement of development and nobody gets there without first being a social creature. So that Ayn Randian, Maggie Thatcher idea that there is no such thing as society, only individuals, is a very unsound idea. It's a common-sense notion but it's not right. It also happens to be one of those old-fashioned ideas that political conservatives depend upon and fiercely defend. In many, many polemical rants, the conservative pits the individualism against the various forms of socialism or liberalism, which are characterized as "collectivist" ideologies. Please notice how this reverses Pirsig's descriptions so that programs for intellectual control are now painted as the enemy and the old social values are thereby protected from egghead interference. > > Sigh. Ant McWatt adds to Dave's comments: John, Just to clear here, an individual in the MOQ is defined as being composed of the four static levels, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual. If you equate the individual with just the intellectual level (of the MOQ) then that puts you outside the MOQ straight away and that's the end of the conversation philosophically - at least as far as this discussion group is concerned. Best wishes, Anthony . 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/md/archives.html
