[MD] Value and the Individual

[Ham Priday]

Hi Ham


> What is the collectivist view?
> That I have arms, legs, eyes, language, culture
> and so do you.

David, I think you know that's not what is meant by the collectivist view.

As I explained to Arlo on 4/3, I find that the post-modern, elitist, 
nihilistic concept of reality invariably hangs on a collectivist view of 
mankind.  This is reflected in Pirsig's philosophy, where 'mankind' is 
relegated to biological and social levels and the individual is defined as a 
"pattern" of quality.  Thus, for many here, man is a mythical entity--an 
artifact of cultural evolution with 'intellect' left hanging at some yet 
unresolved extracorporeal level.

It's no secret that I deplore this deliberate exclusion of proprietary 
awareness from the Quality thesis.  I cannot imagine any philosophy that 
dismisses subjective consciousness as meaningful or enlightening to society. 
For me the individual is central to existence.  It is the individual's 
values that define the experienced world, that determine the course of 
history, and that ultimately relate human beingness to its primary source. 
I view the universe as an anthropocentric system, with man as its 
choicemaker.

In an age where objective reality is everything and technology drives 
"progress", people hunger for answers to the meaning of life and its 
ultimate purpose.  No longer does man rely on the spiritual beliefs of his 
ancestors to support his existence.  Religion and spirituality have been 
preempted by more "enlightened" concepts.  It's little comfort to be told by 
a philosopher that the world is evolving toward "betterness" through a 
competition of levels, even less that the cognizant self is only an 
"abstraction" of the inanimate universe.  Unless man has a central role in 
existential reality, he may as well be a biological offshoot of the 
primates, programmed by nature to 'tread in his petty pace' 'til death 
consumes him.

Until we realize that cognizant awareness is central to existential reality, 
and that there would be no universe in its absence, we are doomed to 
fulfilling Nietzsche's prophecy of a world without meaning, a life without 
soul.  The MoQ's substitution of a Quality hierarchy for subject/object 
reality is not the solution we need.

Regards,
Ham