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

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Arlo previously]
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.

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

[Arlo]
Really? It flows quite perfectly into what he says in ZMM, "Men invent responses
to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what they
themselves are. You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then
you try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you’ve got to work
with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It’s an
analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can’t be anything else. And
the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is
a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the
collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it."

Notice, again, the important distinction in Lila. Biological humans were around
10x's longer than the software that constitutes "me". Very simply, the "me"
does not originate out of individual, biological human existence. It came much
later, when human collective activity formed social patterns, and gave rise to
the mythos, the collective consciousness, which has been growing ever since. 

[Platt]
"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. 

[Arlo]
Yes it does, and yes it is. But what it also means is that something greater
emerges from the collective activity of individuals than any one individual
could achieve, indeed, an "organism" on a higher moral level.

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

[Arlo]
There are plenty of locally owned businesses were I live. Supporting them does
more for the local economy than funneling the majority of capital elsewhere.

[Platt]
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. 

[Arlo]
The trouble is, Walmart just doesn't offer this alternative, it actively shuts
off any other alternative. But, what I find dubious is the concept of people
sitting around going "you know what, I think I'm going to to quit my job and
take a retail position for Walmart."

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

[Arlo]
For you to pay an extra buck for your meat so that your neighbor can stay in
business against Walmarts, so that he can have a profession as a butcher, own
his own shop, rather than work for minimum wage at Walmart, hardly seems like a
stretch. But, I guess, when everything is measured by money, saving that extra
buck is the most important thing in the world.

Arlo