[MD] Science and the MOQ

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
I can understand if you just went by what Arlo says that you would 
get the idea that Pirsig is just another New Age Marxist since Arlo 
always extols the wonders of society, community, culture, 
co-operation, sacrifice  and every other form of collectivism.

[Arlo]
And I can understand that you two seem wholly unable to conceive of 
anything other than some pure dichotomy between "anti-individual 
collectivism" and "lone individuals with other people in the way". 
I've dealt with that nonsense too many time to make it worth my while 
to get into it again. Suffice it to say that I have argued over and 
over that the "self" is a conflation between the assimilated 
collective consciousness (as Pirsig calls it) and the bounded 
proprietary experience of the organism.

Hence your quote "The best of  literary critics know that an author 
has to work alone . . . because his source is not what everyone else 
has said" is not in any way critical of my position. Certainly 
something "new" must be produced, but that "newness" comes in as part 
of the larger social dialogue. This is what Pirsig says in "our 
intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived". 
Take ZMM, without Kant, or the Chairman, or Aristotle, or the host of 
others in the historical-social dialogue that Pirsig was involved in, 
his books would never have been. Everything we say is in response to, 
and in anticipation of, what has already been said. But of course, 
there is something "new", and that newness derives from the point of 
contact between our assimilated collective mind and our bounded 
proprietary experience.

If you wouldn't ignore 1/2 or more of Pirsig, you'd see that taking 
him in whole breaks out of your ridiculous "collective-individual" 
duality. It represents a synthesis. Which is why you can quote Pirsig 
all you like, nothing I say is in disagreement with him on this point.

[Platt]
Pirsig is an individualist from the get go, as witness his two books 
centered around the lives of very unique individuals, including himself.

[Arlo]
Yes, Pirsig wrote two books feature the building of knowledge as a 
dialogic-social narrative involving a cast of people. Neither book 
was "one voice speaking in isolation". Both were social narratives.

[Platt]
Little doubt about where Pirsig stands regarding the individual and 
Marxist-inspired "big programs of social planning for big masses of 
people" like those proposed by Obama and Hillary.

[Arlo]
Since Pirsig has said he is a lifelong democrat, I assume he will be 
voting for Hillary of Barrack. So yes, there is "little doubt" on that.