[MD] Platt's Individual Level

[Gene M]

> "...from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we
> have comes from a single attribute of man -- the functioning of his
> reasoning
> mind.  But the mind is an attribute of the individual.  There is no such
> thing as
> a collective brain.  There is no such thing as a collective thought.  An
> agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average
> drawn
> upon many individual thoughts.  It is a secondary consequence.  The
> primary
> act -- the process of reason -- must be performed by each man alone.  We
> can
> divide a meal among many men.  We cannot digest it in a collective
> stomach.
> No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man.  No man can use his
> brain to think for another.  All the functions of body and spirit are
> private.  They cannot be shared or transferred."


Having had the experience of coming up with ideas collectively, I'm not sure
I buy this at all. Haven't you ever been in a group where one person says an
idea and each person succesively adds onto it, growing the idea,
aggrandizing it until it is greater than each individual idea? Each person
spinning it, changing it slightly so that no single person can say which one
of us made it, but each one takes great pride in it. This is my idea of
collective thought. It happens, I've participated in it.

The thing I like best about that Quote is the end of it, how each individual
is an individual body. We can't digest collectively. I like that a lot! If
there were ever to be an individual level, I would put it biologically. And
even then, it barely makes sense. But it sure makes more sense than
intellectual!

-Gene