[MD] Emergent Consciousness

[ian glendinning]

Thanks for that Craig & Case,
I actually suspect Platt hasn't read it.

I think you have it (Rand's message) about right, unless there are
unforeseen twists in the last 300 pages or so.

The best (people, organisations, motives, etc) are best.
The worst (people, organisations, motives, etc) are worst.
Good is good. Bad is bad. Brilliant, now why didn't I think of that ?

But all her villains are straw-men. Rhetoric - 101.

Trouble is the second half of the message that somehow "individual
self" is therefore all that counts. Her (individual) heros are good
her (collective) organisations & governments are bad - ipso facto
individual is best ?

Doh ! I despair. That's her Logic - Remedial - pure fiction.

Enlightened self-interest without the slightest hint of enlightenment,
a cavernous excluded middle. Pure Mcarthyist propaganda - any form of
collective interest is evil. Utter garbage as a moral code, beyond the
amoeba stage.

I have a lot of time for codes that focus on the individual, (like
Pirsig) after all that's where all "events" actually take place in the
world, but not without the enlightened understanding of all the
emergent realities in the world too. Which is where we came in.

Schoolboy stuff. Depressing and embarrassing to see it in print.

Thanks for that.
(Platt, you are off my list. Hopelessness proven. Take care.)
Ian