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

[Platt Holden]

> [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 must be going blind because I don't see a single reference to 
"collective consciousness" in the above.

[Arlo]
> 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".

I have never argued against the notion that our ideas are "suspended in 
language."  

[Arlo]
> 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.

"Collective activity" simply means individuals going on about their 
business. What Pirsig describes and celebrates here is the Dynamic free 
market, definitely a higher organism than "biological" man.  

> [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. 

Dubious because of your narrow focus. Economies today are global, not 
neighborhoods. You're living in the 19th century.

> [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]
> 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"?

Like Pirsig suggests, some people drop out of the high pressure rat race 
to take jobs at places like Walmart so they can expend their mental effort 
on responding to DQ instead of justifying their existence to a board of 
directors. 

> [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...

Most Mom and Pop stores don't offer any better wages than Walmart. 
Further, Walmart's low prices benefit millions compared to thousands they 
employ who, in most cases, are happy to be working for Walmart if they 
care about working at all. To some it beats sitting around getting drugged 
up while waiting for the next welfare check. 

> [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?
 
You mean you want me to pay more just so my neighbor won't go bankrupt? 
What am I, the Salvation Army?

> [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.

That's not the MOQ I know. The MOQ I know says: "The forces that create 
and destroy these patterns are the forces of value" (Lila, 12) not 
"collective activity."
 
> [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.

I know. We're all victims. Somebody or something else is always to blame.

[Arlo]
> 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?).

So you would bail them out while your daughter freezes? Is 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.

You think I've never been poor? I agree, rich is better.

Platt