[MD] Social Imposition ?

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Chin]
I agree Pirsig is of high Quality, and we do need those who strike out into
their own direction, and not be lemmings, religious, political or intellectual.
I do not care for belief systems or hero worship though.

[Arlo]
What you are saying is that it is better for a person to follow their own sense
of Quality than it is to blindly conform to social authority. I agree with this
wholeheartedly.

But this is not an "individual-collective" issue, it is a DQ-SQ issue.
Collectivization occurs on all MOQ levels, from inorganic to intellectual, as
individuals combine to create greater and more complex individuals. Eventually,
a level of complexity is met that allows the next leap to be not simply one of
greater complexity but an entirely new thing. As cells collectivize to form
greater and more complex biological patterns, eventually those complex
biological patterns, through their collective behavior, give rise to social
patterns. As social patterns collectivize and gain complexity they eventually
produce, by virtue of their collective activity, intellectual patterns. Then,
just as on all the MOQ levels, those individual intellectual patterns
collectivize.

The human mind is both the product of individual micro-genetic experience and
the assimiliation of collective patterns of thought, the mythos, that shape,
guide and enable the individual... that unites our minds as the cells of a body
are united.

[Chin]
As George Bernard Shaw put it; "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

[Platt]
Thanks for your response. We agree on much. And thanks especially for the quote
from Shaw. I will play it back to Arlo whenever he gets on his "collectivist"
kick.

[Arlo]
Your ongoing confusion is to try to paint "collective activity" as obedience to
social authority. Collectivization occurs on ALL the MOQ levels, and is how
evolutionary movement, from inorganic to intellectual patterns, is possible.