DmB, I've got another reply to you coming that's almost finished and some of these issues you raise here might be answered there but but goodness sakes' I don't mind saying the same thing twice. .
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 3:37 PM, david <[email protected]> wrote: > John said to Dan: > ...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. > > dmb says: > Oh, 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. J: Absolutely agree. dmb: 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. J: Just because I'm friends with Platt, Dave, don't construe my agreement with all his thinking. I've always had a problem with Rand's thinking and Scot Ryan's book<http://www.amazon.com/Objectivism-Corruption-Rationality-Critique-Epistemology/dp/0595267335>, only spelled it out all logically and rationally. "Ayn Rand presented Objectivism as a philosophy of reason. But is it? That is the question Scott Ryan seeks to answer in this careful examination of the Objectivist epistemology and its alleged sufficiency as the philosophical foundation of a free and prosperous commonwealth. Sorting painstakingly through Rand's writings on the subject, Mr. Ryan concludes that the epistemology of Objectivism is incoherent and debases both the concept and the practice of rationality." dmb: > 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. Jc: Yes, but that's not proper intellectual control of society. That's manipulation of society for personal-power reasons - those guys are Randian to the extreme and it seems to me they grow more-so every year. But that's actually socially-valued reasoning, dressed up with intellectual justifications that are predicated upon the fundamental, isolated self. An absurd conceptualization on many levels. db: > 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. > > J: intellectual control is a bad idea because it obviates DQ. Even perfect static universe is still merely static. But the fact is, that's the kind of society we've got and putting any level in control is wrong. The purpose of life is a balancing act, each level balances off its neighbors. Society needs intellectual criticism in order to thrive - that's freedom to think of better ways. It does not need intellectual control, in fact it's impossible. Marx's good ideas become justification of oligarchy. Good ideas have to be acted on by people in order to be real, and once you've got that, you've got social competition, period. So intellectual control, in the end, means that people who think they're smarter than everybody else, get to tell us what to do. Screw that. We like their advice. We don't like their control. db: > Sigh. But you're not going to absorb a word of that, are you John? I guess > "individuality' means you don't really care what other people think and > ideas just mean whatever you want them to mean. > > Jc: Well... an argument could be made, ya know. If my ideas don't mean what I want them to mean, they're fired! And if I didn't care what other people thought, I sure wouldn't be talking to you, Dave. JohnC 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
