[MD] Catching up to Pirsig

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Krimel]
But not one single individual's contribution has ever amounted to 
diddly squat unless others in the community thought it worthwhile.

[Platt]
What utter and complete nonsense. Nobody but Frank Llogd Wright and 
his client thought his plans for Falling Water was worth diddly squat.

[Arlo]
Why do you bother, Krimel? Platt's pedantic view will never be 
anything more than the Good Individual versus the Evil Society. For 
him, "individual" and "collective" are unrelated, and in fact, 
oppositional forces. Its like arguing climatology with someone whose 
view of the weather consists only of "Sunny=Good, Rainy=Bad". You can 
get into all the nuances, intricacies, codependancies and 
inter-relatedness all you want, but the extent of your "thoughtful" 
reply will always be, "hey commie Krimel, stop trying to enslave us 
sunny-lovers with your rainy day liberal propaganda".

I'd submit that, as you say, its never "individual opposed to 
collective", but "individuals engaged in collective activity". To 
present the two as a rehashed "God/Satan" story is simply inane.

Agency-to-act, "free will", is both enabled and constrained by the 
evolving dance between "individual patterns" and the collective 
tapestry they weave as they dance around. Wright's very ability to 
conceive of, symbolically plan, and draw upon a collective resource 
pool to complete, would be inconceivable outside a collective 
dialogue. To paraphrase Pirsig, "Twentieth century American culture 
exists, therefore Wright plans, therefore Falling Water exists". And 
even this should be expanded by saying, "Twentieth century American 
culture exists, therefore a shared collective knowledge base 
compromising aesthetics, architectural design, art, science, 
carpentry, materials engineering, division of labor, economic 
exchange, and a multitude of other collective resources exists, 
therefore Wright was able to respond to the ongoing architectural 
dialogue, therefore others were able to respond to Wright, therefore 
Falling Waters was conceived, planned, financed and built, owing not 
to One but to Many, a magnificent work of art evidencing the beauty 
of a shared and evolving aesthetic dialogue in American Culture."

Voices are always a part of an ongoing narrative, inseparable from 
it. And while the narrative structures what any one voice can say, it 
is the narrative that also bestows the freedom to speak. It is 
unavoidably enabling and constraining. To quote Sinatra, "You can't 
have one without the other".

[Krimel]
Societies are not either individualistic or collective  They are both.

[Arlo]
Exactly. Societies are individuals-in-collective-activity. And just 
as the individual internalizes (assimilates) the collective (indeed, 
becomes an agenic individual as a result), so to does the collective 
internalize the individual. Metaphor: Eshers' hand drawing the hand 
that is, in turn, drawing it. The very agency bestowed on the 
individual by the structure of the collective are the seeds by which 
that structure changes.