[Arlo previously] Not according to Pirsig, who rightly describes how the collective consciousness unites our minds as cells in a body.
[Platt] You mean "common knowledge" rather than "collective consciousness" don't you? [Arlo] No, I mean what I wrote. [Platt] My cat does nothing that cats don't predictably do. If he starts staring at his paw in wonder and delight, then I'll say he responds to DQ. [Arlo] My cat stares at his tail all the time. He does this because he has biological awareness, and can respond to DQ on this level. [Platt] No. "Stare at in wonder" is a human baby's response to DQ long before she knows anything about social-intellectual patterns. [Arlo] Its a biological pattern of response. But even that human baby is awash in social patterns, and begins at a very early age appropriating social understandings. [Platt] As for what responded to DQ before humans, read the chapter in Lila explaining evolution from the MOQ perspective. [Arlo] There is nothing there to support your contention, despite your smug attempt to dismiss the question. But answer me this, was there ever a time when animals responded to DQ? If so, please explain to me how they were any different then than they are now. I mean, certainly cats could at one time respond to DQ? Or could they never respond to DQ? When they could, how were they different from today? Did they stare at their paws in wonder and delight back then? [Platt] It doesn't lick any fur but its own. He doesn't need "culture" to know that he's different from the dog down the block. [Arlo] No, there is a bodily-kinesthetic awareness that brings a sense of boundedness, as I said. [Platt] This is the "self" I hold dear, morally separate and higher than "collective consciousness." But I understand you reluctance to acknowledge this. [Arlo] Yeah, you know THAT'S funny. Since I am the one who support national health care because INDIVIDUAL human life is MORE VALUABLE than social level wealth. And it is me who denounces capital punishment because of the value of the INDIVIDUAL. And since I am the one who denounces all consensual "crime" because INDIVIDUAL freedom is supreme to state control (including public nudity and wearing items of choice). Your deep-rooted hypocrisy nonwithstanding, once again you demonstrate only your desire to drag the conversation back into some artificial (and political) dichotomy. This "self" that you pretend to hold so dear, is the emergent result of combinations of individual and collective patterns, the result of individual bodily-kinesthetic experience intertwining with the collective consciousness. It is NOT a matter of "one person versus a group of people", but a process by which that little "strange loop" in your head, that dialogic reference point, which is always in flux, that arises from the mutually-transformative and mutually-generative "dance" between your "proprietary experience" and the "collective consciousness" comes into being, and what it means that it comes into being in this manner... that it is a part of the world, not apart from it. I'll keep talking about cats and DQ, but am bowing out of the rest. 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/
