[MD] Catching up to Pirsig

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Arlo had said to Krimel]
Why do you bother, Krimel? Platt's pedantic view will never be 
anything more than the Good Individual versus the Evil Society.

[Platt responds with a favorite, but irrelevant, soundbite]
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of 
the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and 
that's all.

[Arlo to Krimel now]
You see? This address none of the points made,  just like responding 
to a discussion on climatology by saying "In the sun, amusement parks 
are more fun.". Errr... okay, whatever.

In any event, the quote provides half the example given. The seeds of 
social change are in the individuals, who receive their agency to 
enact such change by assimilating social structures. Voices are 
empowered only within a dialogue, meaning arises only in narrative. 
And while this narrative constrains what can be said, it also makes 
possible the things that can be said.

Consider a child, left on a desert island immediately following 
birth, with no human contact, no human interaction at all. Aside from 
the reality that survival would be largely improbable, let's say we 
are monitoring this individual with strong telescopes from space. Now 
what are the chances this individual will construct Falling Water? 
Answer. Zero. Only a social being like Wright, who has assimilated 
the collective knowledge of his culture, who participates in the 
collective dialogue, who is part of a functioning activity system 
consisting of labor division, knowledge, finances/power, transmission 
and materials production, etc. could be part of Falling Water's construction.

But that same social structure that enabled Wright and others to 
partake of this narrative, also gave each the ability to change the 
very structures they assimilated. A hand that draws the hand that is, 
in turn, drawing it. THAT is the best metaphor for 
"individual-collective" that I can think of.

Arlo