[MD] Platt's Individual Level

[Platt Holden]

> > [Case]
> > Then we are agreeing that the ideas contain are collaborative efforts.
> There
> > really is no individual effort to credit or blame?
> 
> [Platt]
> No. We agree that an idea(s) cannot be separated from an individual(s).
> 
> [Case]
> I see that you attach great significance to this but I am not sure why.
> As the Preacher said about 3000 years ago "There is no new thing under
> the sun." To say that ideas reside in individuals is not especially
> profound where else but limbo or oblivion would they be. You could be
> espousing some version of idealism in which ideas are "out there"
> waiting to be discovered but that would not suit your purposes very
> well, I should like. You certainly can not be thinking that any one is
> creating new wholly formed ideas out of nowhere in isolation. The best
> one can say about is that some people are very creative in rearranging
> ideas and seeing new relationships among them.
> 
> To you think that the rearrangement of ideas is especially praiseworthy?
> What credit does someone like Pirsig or Springsteen deserve for their
> creative arrangements beyond the price of their books or recordings and
> a hearty, Thanks? Can anyone own an idea in the same sense that they own
> a car or a house?

Creative people are the catalysts of evolution. They tap into DQ, the 
"free force of life."  That's why creative individuals are so 
important.  Pirsig illustrates this with the story of the brujo, and 
puts the individual front and center  by observing "someone has to be 
first."  

> Should we arrange our social structures to defend the ownership of ideas
> at the expense of the public interest and the public purse?

Who is to say what the "public interest" is? All the horrors of history 
have been done in the name of the public interest.

Platt