[MD] Social Imposition ?

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt]
Nicely said. We agree, such values can't be captured in a photograph. Maybe
Norman Rockwell comes close in some of his paintings. But, your (or his)
description is not the reality. Can we agree on that? 

[Arlo]
We agree on that.

[Platt]
Maybe the distinction between words and direct experience isn't important, but
for some reason I think it is. In any event, the relationship is endlessly
fascinating.

[Arlo]
I, too, think it is important. We have our "immediate esthetic experiences", or
our "pre-intellectual experience", or "Zen moments", or what will you, but as
soon as we get into logos or mythos we are (and I know you HATE this word)
mediated by language. As I just quoted to Ian, "Our intellectual description of
nature is always culturally derived" (LILA). This quote continues, "Nature
tells us only what our culture predisposes us to hear. The selection of which
inorganic patterns to observe and which to ignore is made on the basis of
social patterns of value, or when it is not, on the basis of biological
patterns of value." (LILA)

Our words, our language, our "symbol system", this mediates our interaction with
nature. And this relationship, like you, I find fascinating. There are two ways
to look at this, I suppose, as "restricting" or "enabling". Some (the thinkers
I like) banter about something called "structuration". That is, it is BOTH
restricting and enabling. (Giddens, not to oversimplify, used the language
"agency" for enabling and "structure" for restriction).

In a passage the resonates in many ways with my reading of Pirsig, Wikipedia
says this. 

"Structuration theory aims to avoid extremes of structural or agent determinism.
The balancing of agency and structure is referred to as the duality of
structure.

For Giddens, structures are rules and resources (sets of transformation
relations) organized as properties of social systems. The theory employs a
recursive notion of actions constrained and enabled by structures which are
produced and reproduced by that action. Consequently, this theory has been
adopted by those with structuralist inclinations, but who wish to situate such
structures in human practice rather than reify them as an ideal type or
material property. (This is different, for example, from Actor-network theory
which grants a certain autonomy to technical artifacts.) Additionally, the
theory of structuration distinguishes between discursive and practical
knowledge, recognizes actors as knowledgeable, such knowledge is reflexive and
situated, and that habitual use becomes institutionalized."

Interestingly, the distiction between discursive and practical knowledge is
given by Jones and Karsten as "practical consciousness embodied in what actors
know "about how to 'go on' in the multiplicity of contexts of social life"
(Giddens, 1983) and at the discursive level, at which they are able to provide
explanations for them". Now tell me that does not map pretty neatly as "social
level-practical knowledge, intellectual level-discursive knowledge".

The authors also provide this quote from Giddens, which I want to emphasize as a
fairly good phrasing of "collectivism". "[T]he production or constitution of
society is a skilled accomplishment of its members, but one that does not take
place under conditions that are either wholly intended or wholly comprehended
by them." I think this goes very well with Pirsig's sentiment, "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?"