[MD] MD 4th level - The more autonomous level

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Platt]
Oh? I can't find a single reference in Lila. You would think if it's all 
that important he would have mentioned it in his latest work.

[Arlo]
First, I don't ignore either book because it doesn't conform to my agenda. I
think both are valuable, but the first more so. At any rate, no, Pirsig does
not use the term "collective consciousness" in Lila, but he continues to refer
to it. For example,

"This Cartesian "Me," this autonomous little homunculus who sits behind our
eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass judgment on the affairs of
the world, is just completely ridiculous. This self-appointed little editor of
reality is just an impossible fiction that collapses the moment one examines
it. This Cartesian "Me" is a software reality, not a hardware reality. This
body on the left and this body on the right are running variations of the same
program, the same "Me," which doesn't belong to either of them. The "Me's" are
simply a program format. Talk about aliens from another planet. This program
based on "Me's" and "We's" is the alien. "We" has only been here for a few
thousand years or so. But these bodies that "We" has taken over were around for
ten times that long before "We" came along""

Notice the last part. Human "bodies" have been here for "ten times" longer than
the software reality "we" and "me" took over. I don't think I should have to
point out, again, the passage where he says point blank that it is a "myth"
that intellectual patterns derive "from the world of objects". Rather, he says,
they result from "social mediation".

He also, in Lila, indicates that social patterns are a "higher organism" than
individual, biological man. "Societies and cultures and cities are not
inventions of "man" but higher organisms than biological man". And a few
paragraphs earlier, "The metaphysics of substance makes it difficult to see the
Giant. It makes it customary to think of a city like New York as a "work of
man," but what man invented it? What group of men invented it? Who sat around
and thought up how it should all go together?". Social patterns, then, are not
the "invention of an individual man", but an emergent pattern resulting from
collective activity.

[Platt]
I consider your economic analysis of the Walmart effect on the local job 
market to be somewhat dubious. I don't think the decision on where to 
build a new Honda plant is affected one way or another by the proximity of 
a local Walmart.

[Arlo]
You find it dubious based on what? My argument had nothing to do with a Honda
plant being brought into an area. It had to do with the transformation of
local, entrepreneurial labor into low-paying retail positions. 

[Platt]
The message in Lila was that even an assembly line worker can care about 
what she is doing. I believe he used the Japanese worker as an example.

[Arlo]
Again, yes I know, it must burn you that he wrote ZMM at all, eh?

On what you mention, Pirsig wrote, "If one comes from a cultural tradition where
an electronic assembly is primarily a moral order rather than just a neutral
pile of substance, it is easier to feel an ethical responsibility for doing
good work on it." I'm not sure this is a carte blanche statement in support of
assembly line work, just because something's "easier" does not make it "right".
Just a few sentences later, Pirsig writes, "That is, you master them with such
proficiency that they become an unconscious part of your nature. You get so
used to them you completely forget them and they are gone. There in the center
of the most monotonous boredom of static ritualistic patterns the Dynamic
freedom is found. Phaedrus saw nothing wrong with this ritualistic religion as
long as the rituals are seen as merely a static portrayal of Dynamic Quality, a
sign-post which allows socially pattern-dominated people to see Dynamic
Quality. The danger has always been that the rituals, the static patterns, are
mistaken for what they merely represent and are allowed to destroy the Dynamic
Quality they were originally intended to preserve."

What "Dynamic Quality" are people who are forced to work for Walmart, because
their small-business jobs were crushed, "seeing"?

[Platt]
Oh brother. Big bad corporations again. I hope you realize that corporate 
American has done more to alleviate poverty than all the intellectuals and 
politicians combined.

[Arlo]
Really. I'd say the your local mom and pop shops have done more to alleviate
poverty than your Walmart. Take away hundreds of hard hour, but decent paying
entrepreneurial jobs and replace them with hundreds of minimum wage jobs. Yep,
that'll alleviate poverty all right...

[Platt]
Some win, some lose. That's the conservative mantra. It's not the liberal 
mantra of entitlement. 

[Arlo]
So why not support the little guy who is struggling to make his own business?
Why glorify saving a buck because Walmart can buy in huge bulk discount like
that little guy who hopes to own his own butcher shop? Is it more important for
you to save a dollar and make Sam Walton a millionaire than to help your
neighbor work his own butcher shop?


[Platt]
Pirsig writes:. "Societies is used figuratively here as a more colorful 
word meaning "groups."  If I had known it would be taken literally as 
evidence that cells belong in the social level I would not have used it.  
Maybe in a future edition it can be struck out. One can also call ants and 
bees "social" insects, but for purposes of precision in the MOQ social 
patterns should be  defined as human and subjective.  Unlike cells and 
bees and ants they cannot be detected with an objective scientific 
instrument.  For example there is no objective scientific instrument that 
can distinguish between a king and commoner, because the difference is  
social." (LC, #49)

[Arlo]
Hmm. You pick interesting battles. Okay, although I'm not sure I was strongly
suggesting cells be called a "society", I'll accept Pirsig's statement you
provided. But it says nothing to change the underlying MOQ principle:

Collective activity on one level gives emergence to a higher level. Collective
activity of atoms gives rise to the emergence of biological patterns.
Collective activity of biological individuals gives rise to social patterns
("it's as foolish to think of a city or a society as created by human bodies as
it is to think of human bodies as a creation of the cells"). Collective
activity on the social level gives rise to Intellectual patterns ("The
intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of freeing itself from
its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to invent a myth of
independence from the social level for its own benefit. Science and reason,
this myth goes, come only from the objective world, never from the social
world. The world of objects imposes itself upon the mind with no social
mediation whatsoever.
It is easy to see the historic reasons for this myth of independence. Science
might never have survived without it. But a close examination shows it isn't
so.")

That's the MOQ. Plain and simple.

[Platt on poverty]
I think the world would be much better off if we didn't insulate people 
from their bad decisions.

[Arlo]
You assume people experience financial problems because of "their bad
decisions". More often than not, it is the result of someone else's decision.
Or injury. Or illness in the family. You're right, when people lose all their
money because they invested in bad stocks, we should let them suffer and die
(isn't that what you're saying?).

By the way, if you don't think "being poor" is punishment enough, I suggest you
try it. I've had a few months over the past several years where I struggled to
make even basic utility payments. Having to call the electric company and beg
them to give you another week or power so your daughter doesn't freeze in the
winter is no joy. Yep. Been there. Believe me, you're never "insulated" from
that.

Arlo