Hi Arlo OK - I was being sarcastic and apologise if you or anyone else took offense. But my point was a bit more serious. We've been down the individual vs. collective road many times and so far it's gotten pretty much nowhere so I'm trying to introduce a different point of view with the hope of avoiding the usual arguments and maybe getting some agreement. Although I'm not holding my breath until it happens.
ARLO J BENSINGER JR wrote: > [Horse] > Before we get into another pointless political debate about the wonderfulness > of the magnificent individual versus the marvelous collective could we try and > think about this maybe from a slightly better perspective - i.e. mine! :) > > [Arlo] > Your perspective is always good to hear, Horse. First let me clarify, I never > posited a "marvelous collective" to a "magnificent individual". Both views are > misguided. This is a dialogic pairing, to elevate one over the other is akin > to > elevating night over day. I agree, but still we need to find some sort of common ground. I also know you didn't posit a marvelous collective - I was just funnin' with you and Platt. > > We DO have "proprietary awareness". This arises from our unique > bodily-kinesthetic experience in the world. But the "self" is more than this. > The "self" emerges only through the appropriation of the collective > consciousness (CC), when in dance with our bodily-kinesthetic (BK) experiences > a dialogic referential point arises. I no more elevate the CC over BK > experience than I find those who do the reverse misguided. OK - so to re-cap we have a particular type of awareness/consciousness and a shared body of ideas. Agreed? Let's try and keep the terminology relatively straightforward. As it happens, I really don't like the term's 'proprietary awarenes' or 'collective consciousness' as they have far too much baggage. 'Self' is a little better but still troublesome. > > I do take exception, also, at a suggestion that places "Dynamic" with the > so-called "individual", and static with the CC, for the "self" is BOTH. > Already > Platt has jumped on yet another rhetorical dichotomy to elevate the so-called > "individual" above his distorted notion of a collective consciousness. Here's where the idea of collective knowledge comes in useful. The way that I'm suggesting knowledge is gained and transmitted has both a static and dynamic element within the different levels. An individual, as Platt refers to it, shares knowledge at, certainly, 3 and possibly 4 levels. However, at each level it is expressed qualitatively differently. Biological knowledge, social knowledge and intellectual knowledge are, obviously, related to the levels within which they live. But they are only part of their overall respective levels. > > Intellectual activity, the emergence of static intellectual patterns, arises > from the dialogic activity of social individuals. A singular "individual" does > nothing. A collective does nothing. But the two in dance gives rise to higher > levels (this is true for all MOQ-level relations). In this same way, Dynamic > activity is enabled by this dance, not by one or the other, and not in the > appallingly simplistic Randian model. > > A baby left on a deserted island not only would have no "self" (as we > understand it) but would be wholly incapable of producing social or > intellectual patterns. These things are only enabled by the interplay between > the emergent collective consciousness and the bodily-kinesthetic "proprietary > awareness" of the biological agent. Lets be real here. If you stick a baby alone on an island it's dead in a week so obviously would have no self. A baby becomes an adult by being part of a society of some form and learning what it does from it's interactions. But this isn't what I'm getting at. A baby can gain biological knowledge and does when it's vaccinated or catches a cold or similar. When it grows up and interacts with others it gains social knowledge such as how to behave in certain situations. At a later stage it gains intellectual knowledge by discussion and other means. All of these precesses have both static and dynamic elements. The problem here is that we're trying to relate all these different types of knowledge to humans which is a complete non-starter. Biological knowledge, social knowledge and intellectual knowledge have far wider implications than just their relationship to humans. > > And yes, "collective intelligence" is a misnomer to refer to this. Collective > consciousness is much more accurate. However "intellectual patterns", I must > point out, ARE collective patterns. They are the result of social-historical > dialogic activity. They do not arise from individuals-in-isolation, only > individuals-in-collective. Pirsig did not write the MOQ alone, he wrote it > with > Kant, James, Dusenberry, Chris, his wife, his students, his professors, and > countless larger and smaller voices and echoes. He was (is) certainly a > "keystone" species in its development, but even his statement that he wishes > to > see it grow beyond him into something larger reminds us that its "birth" is > not > its "end". It is evolutionary, and it is evolutionary precisely because it is > dialogic. This is where the politically slanted arguments generally start. Can we say for the moment that intellectual knowledge is a subset of intellectual patterns of value (IntPovs), just as social and biological knowledge are subsets of social and intellectual patterns of value. They all arise in different ways according to the level they exist within. Not all IntPovs are shared or shareable but intellectual knowledge is shareable - same with social/biological patterns and knowledge - and thus can be considered collective. I just don't think that the term collective consciousness is particularly useful in the same way that I don't see the term collective intelligence as useful. I think shared intellectual knowledge, or shared ideas if you want, has far less baggage and is more intuitively graspable. Consciousness and knowledge have a relationship within the intellectual level but are not the same thing. Consciousness is far too slippery a term to be useful in this sort of debate. > > His voice in one voice in a dialogue. Without the dialogue, the voices would > have nothing to say. Without the voices, the dialogue would cease. It is not a > matter of "static-Dynamic", but a matter or mutually-emergent phenomena. And yet it can also be a veritable babble from which some coherence occasionally emerges. A bit like on this forum at times. But again if we separate out the information/knowledge from the dialogue again we're looking at two different beasties. > > Indeed, I tire of this whole ridiculous debate, and its perennial devolution > into this "epic battle" nonsense. For no matter how many times we go round, > its > always the same thing; if you don't wank off to the Glorious Individual, you > are evil collectivist who denies the value of people (witness Micah's recent > typical, and expected, distortions). So let's get rid of the causes of the ridiculous mass debate and look at the whole thing from a different perspective. An MoQ perspective would be quite nice. > > "Proprietary awareness" and the "collective consciousness" are the forever > intertwined, inseparable, dialogic, yin and yang co-constructs of the emergent > "self". Personally I would consider both terms to be completely redundant - all awareness is proprietary and no consciousness is collective. Get rid of the terms and you remove the conflict and are able to move on. > > If you don't think so, let's drop a few babies off on their own deserted > islands for a few decades and then come back and see what wonderfully Dynamic > or intellectual patterns these proprietary agents create. Let's see how many > even have names for themselves, let alone write novels or invent things. > Recall > Pirsig's accurate criticism of Descartes. It is not enough "to think" to make > an "I am". This must be preceded by "so and so culture exists". The only thing you're likely to find is bones - if that. > > Bottom line, its a dance, not a war. Care to have the last one with me! :) Take care Horse 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/
