[MD] Consciousness

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Platt [Krimel and all] --

> "A tribe can change its values only person by person and
> someone has to be first." (Lila, 9)

[Krimel]:
> And someone has to go second. If only the first guy changes,
> the tribe never does.

[Platt]:
> Right, individual by individual, person by person, one by one.

 [Krimel]:
> The point is that humans do not now and have never existed as
> "individuals".
> Individual thoughts and actions always and only take place in a social
> context. No single individual creates or has created anything out over
> whole cloth. We always act, invent, discover and create within a
> social context that provides not just the raw material of our doing
> but gives it meaning and significance.

[Platt]:
> Yes, laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.
> In other words, each of us is eternally separate but never apart.
> But when it comes to an evolutionary advance, a step towards
> betterness, an individual always leads the way, whether a carbon atom,
> a fishing chimpanzee or an Albert Einstein. The rest follow.

[Krimel]:
> No, we always live and breathe in the context of others. We are
> the product of our culture and culture provides the context and the
> raw material for every advancement made by every individual.
> The advance of any individual is not an advance at all unless it is
> appreciated and adopted by others. An advancement only has
> meaning in the context of culture.

It's no use, Platt.  "Humans have never existed as individuals," says 
Krimel.  Even Pirsig's "person by person" statement has no affect on the 
collectivist mindset.

I've become increasingly convinced that the fundamental principle of 
existence is "separateness"... that Value is unrealizable without 
individuals who are separated from each other and whose reality is 
experienced as a differentiated system.  I can conceive of no other 
cosmology capable of  achieving value appreciation by a finite agent that 
relates to the absolute source but is not itself essential.  Such, I 
believe, is man's role in the cosmic scheme of things.  But this of course 
is incomprehensible to those who are persuaded that Value is the source and 
that the individual is but a collection of its "patterns".

Also, I wanted to take the opportunity to wish the MDers all the joys of the 
season with a plug for my Values Page at www.essentialism.net/balance.htm. 
You might get a kick out of this week's column which is a politically 
correct take on Clement Moore's "'Twas the Night before Chistmas" written by 
a creative poet named Ehrlich in 1992.  (I've added a few touches of my 
own.)

Merry Christmas, Platt!
Ham