[MD] Say what?

[Sojosoniq]

Ham:

> > Need I requote her [Ayn Rand]?
> >
> > "...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."
> >
> > I'm committed to Rand's concept that knowledge, intellect, and ideas are
> > proprietary to individual cognizance.  They originate with the
individual,
> > are created by the individual, and acted upon by the individual.

Uh.. say what?  How does this explain mobs and "collective hysteria"?  Or
Jungian psychological concepts?

Pirsig himself describes many facets of "The Giant" yet it seems everyone
here dismisses the concept, acting as if it is a given that "societies" are
completely subservient to individuals making discrete decisions and that
there is no thinking organism larger than a single human being. It seems to
me that the evidence is actually to the contrary - that groups of people
(societies) DO act and behave as if they were a larger organism composed of
individual humans, the society itself.

I havent heard anyone argue that individual muscle cells singularly all
decide individually to move together to effect a person's arm contracting -
on the contrary, it seems to be a given that the individual is moving
his/her arm.

The only way I can explain this perspective is that all (or most) of the
people on this email list think all actions originate with the individual,
sort of a Copernican "I"-centered viewpoint.  Members of other societies,
(including the "primitive" people so often sneered at on this list)
including those from medieval Europe, would vehemently disagree.