[MD] Catching up to Pirsig

[Ham Priday]

[Krimel]
> To the extent that our sense of moralistic or esthetic values
> are not inherited, they are inculcated by participation in our
> social communities.
> Your ideas about freedom of choice are both grandiose and
> untenable. That freedom is mostly illusory. I am not free to
> see with my ears or to enjoy eating poisons. In fact the more
> closely you examine any freedom at all, the more it dissolves
> into wishful thinking.

Denial of individual freedom is what I see as the tragedy of the 
collectivist worldview.  In the
history of mankind, all discoveries, creations, and social advancements have 
originated as the individual's realization of value.  I haven't quoted Ayn 
Rand for some time, but I can think of no better rebuttal of your argument 
that this classic statement:

"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.

"We inherit the products of the thought of other men.  We inherit the wheel. 
We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile.  The automobile becomes an 
airplane.  But all through the process what we receive from others is only 
the end product of their thinking.  The moving force is the creative faculty 
which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. 
This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed.  It 
belongs to single, individual men.  That which it creates is the property of 
the creator.  Men learn from one another.  But all learning is only the 
exchange of material.  No man can give another the capacity to think.  Yet 
that capacity is our only means of survival."
         -- Rand: 'For the New Intellectual', (1978)

As for "seeing with your ears" or "enjoying poisons", I'm surprised that you 
would resort to such churlishness after characterizing my choicemaker 
concept as "grandiose and untenable".

-- Ham

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

> [Ham]
> Preference and intent are what guide human choices, not the
> evolution of Nature.  The point I was making, which you've
> quoted somewhat out of context, is that preference is man's response to
> perceived values and is proprietary to the individual subject.  Morality 
> is
> the collective expression or consensus of individual (i.e., subjective)
> preferences.  WE are the agents who bring value into our world as evolving
> objects and events.
>
> [Krimel]
> The choice that are available and our ability to interact with them are
> entirely the product of evolution and nature. Preferences for what is good
> and bad relative to us as individuals are likewise the products of our
> genetic heritage combined with present circumstances and our individual
> histories. Morality is entirely about human interaction. It makes no sense
> to talk about the morality of the universe or the morality of some
> hypothetical isolated human being.
>
> [Ham]
> Individuals don't "adopt collective evaluations" unless
> forced to do so by the church or state.  A collective doesn't sense value;
> it is the individual who perceives (realizes) value and chooses to act
> according to his preferences.  If anything, it's the collective which
> "adopts to" the subjective, not the other way around.  The individual, not
> society, is the world's choicemaker.
>
> [Krimel]
> Yes, we do indeed disagree completely here. It is flatly absurd to state 
> the
> we adopt collective evaluation only through the use of force. No society
> could succeed that way. We are introduced into the values of our culture 
> by
> our parents who, in their desire to make copies of themselves, include as
> part of that, instilling the values of the community. Without such values
> human life would be impossible. The values of society are its intellectual
> level. They are the shared understandings and experience of all who claim 
> to
> be one of us.
>
> Individuals can certainly make personal decision that are at odds with
> society but we become fully human only by participating in the shared
> heritage of our community.
>
> [Ham]
> The values I'm talking about are moralistic or esthetic values like
> goodness, beauty, compassion, and justice.  Only human beings possess this
> kind of sensibility and the freedom to choose discriminately.  Without
> subjective awareness there would be no realization of value, nor a moral
> system to guide society.
>
> [Krimel]
> To the extent that our sense of moralistic or esthetic values are not
> inherited, they are inculcated by participation in our social communities.
> Your ideas about freedom of choice are both grandiose and untenable. That
> freedom is mostly illusory. I am not free to see with my ears or to enjoy
> eating poisons. In fact the more closely you examine any freedom at all, 
> the
> more it dissolves into wishful thinking.