[MD] [MD} The relativity of the MoQ

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 28 Aug 2009 at 14:39, Ham Priday wrote:

> Platt, John, and All --
> 
> On 28 Aug 2009 at 7:50, John Carl wrote:
> 
> > Platt,
> >
> > Isn't a "collective" simply a quantity of individuals?   How can a single
> > individual intellectual person be valued above a collection of intellects?
> 
> There you have it, folks!
> 
> John has just invoked a major misconception of the postmodern age: 'The 
> Greater Good'.  Not only does this ideology lead to moral confusion and the 
> death of individualism, but I wouId go so far as to pronounce it the "evil 
> of our culture".
> 
> This is going to get me into hot water with many of you Pirsig acolytes, yet 
> it needs to be said.  The individual human being is the most precious entity 
> on earth.  If we can't put a price on the individual life, by what calculus 
> can we measure the value of  "a collection of lives"?  The notion that the 
> collective society has more value than the individual is a regression to the 
> pantheist view that "the whole is equal to the sum of its parts," and that 
> the single part is virtually worthless.  It misses the whole point of 
> individual existence, philosophically, epistemologically, 
> socio-economically, and intellectually.
> 
> The universe is anthropocentric -- not in the sense of "mankind" but AS the 
> sensibility of the Self.  Any other theory of existence is fraught with 
> problems, not the least of which is the loss of meaning.  As Platt correctly 
> said:
> 
> > There's no such thing as a collection of intellects or a collective 
> > intellect.
> > Your intellect like your life is yours and yours alone. (See quote from
> > Pirsig's SODV about individual values.)  If you wish to persist in
> > believing a collection of intellects exists, then you must also see that
> > history is full of examples were a majority of intellects has been wrong.
> 
> In the middle of the last century, Ayn Rand wrote prophetically:
> 
> "We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage 
> where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens 
> may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of 
> human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
> 
> And in The Fountainhead ...
> 
> "From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the 
> wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single 
> attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.
> 
> "But 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 of 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 use his lungs to breathe for another man.  No man can use 
> his brain to think for another.  All the functions of the body and spirit 
> are private.  They cannot be shared or transferred."
> 
> Until we realize the truth of this epistemology, we will be frantically 
> trying to fit the pieces of our experiential world, including its esthetic 
> and moralistic attributes, into a unified whole which does not exist.  This 
> "whole" that we struggle to construct as a collectivist paradigm is our 
> secular culture's substitute for the Creator or Primary Source.  It will 
> never work, because ultimate reality is not a collection of patterns, 
> levels, parts, or ideas.  It is One in  Essence.
> 
> Thanks for your time and tolerance.
> 
> Best wishes,
> Ham

Hi Ham,

Excellent post. Should be required reading beginning in the 5th grade 
and at the beginning of every school year thereafter. Of course, liberals 
who are fully responsible for the disastrous failure of our public school  
system as well as systemic poverty in the big cities, will never allow 
such thoughts to be exposed to young minds. Unfortunately, the love of 
liberals for tolerance and diversity doesn't  extend to the world of ideas. 
It will be interesting to see how many of those in the MD who profess to 
be tolerant, compassionate and loving will respond to your ideas in that 
spirit. Predictably there will be a few hypocrites who will launch their 
usual ad hominem attacks. 

Best regards,
Platt