[MD] Homotheism

[Arlo Bensinger]

[John]
Well I think we're definitely talking about different things.  Your 
laying out the mechanisms by which social values are transferred or 
implemented,
and I'm looking at the basic value sets themselves.

[Arlo]
Well, not exactly. "Stucturation" considers the context through which 
patterns both replicate and evolve. Your initial post was aimed at 
criticizing coercion/homogenization through a willful power 
structure. What I say is a much more accurate picture is that 
"homogenization" is not the goal of some totalitarian guvmint or 
other power-structure, but that assimilation of shared history across 
the board ensures patterned homogenization. But, this is not an 
"evil" that can be "overcome", for without "structuration" there can 
be no "agency". The structuration language a child appropriates both 
constrains her/his thoughts but also enables that child to act with 
social and intellectual agency.

Because while it is true that "20th century French culture exists, 
therefore Descartes thinks, therefore he is", we see that the agency 
enabled by appropriating language would not be possible otherwise, 
even as that language shapes the structure or form of Descartes thoughts.

[John]
When a society values reason above all, it will transmit the values 
of reason, when it values war, it teaches war.

[Arlo]
This is more a superficial snapshot that wrongly thinks such things 
can be decided and taught on whim. It might be more helpful to 
consider key cultural valuations, such as "money", and see the deep 
ramifications of such a value. I mention this because Gav and y'all 
are talking about this in another thread. I think the thing to 
consider in your above statement is that "WE" are "SOCIETY".

Now, granted, any society based on hierarchical power will induce 
power-reification from those at the top. In a money-culture, those 
with money/power will often work to propagate the values that ensure 
their continued power. I should note that this was a central concern 
of Marx, who looked at the wedding of religion and capital power as a 
means of keeping the working poor faithful to maintain the power of 
their economic masters. This also reminds me of the great Rowdy Rody 
Piper film "They Live".

[John]
When it values itself, it teaches and transmits it's known static 
patterns based on what has pragmatically worked in the past.

[Arlo]
Well, again, I think self-replication is built into the system, from 
DNA to the assimilation of collective consciousness of all 
communicating mankind.

In "Hero with a Thousand Faces", Campbell mirrors a sentiment 
expressed by Pirsig that "evolution" enters the system from the 
outside, that it is through the collision of static patterns that 
new, better patterns emerge. For Pirsig, it was the Brujo's 
assimilation of European values. Or "Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is 
sometimes given credit for [the doctrine "all men are created 
equal"], certainly didn't get it from the history of Europe or Asia 
or Africa. He got it from the impact of the New World upon Europe and 
from contemplation of one particular kind of individual who lived in 
the New World, the person he called the "Noble Savage."

Campell quotes Arnold Toynbee, "schism in the soul, schism in the 
body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of return to the good 
old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal 
projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, 
hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements. 
Only birth can conquer death- the birth, not of the old thing again, 
but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there 
must be- if we are to experience long survival- a continuous 
"recurrence of birth" to nullify the unremitting recurrences of 
death. For it is by means of our own victories, if we are not 
regenerated, that the work of Nemesis is wrought: doom breaks from 
the shell of our very virtue. Peace, then, is a snare; war is a 
snare; change is a snare; permanence a snare."

[John]
I tried to describe the problem to Platt...

[Arlo]
Well Platt is stuck with his focus on the "last static latch" (as 
Pirsig points out, "The end of the twentieth century in America seems 
to be an intellectual, social, and economic rust-belt, a whole 
society that has given up on Dynamic improvement and is slowly trying 
to slip back to Victorianism, the last static ratchet-latch").

I've said before, and I'll say it again, I think its meaningful to go 
back and look at the hippies, what they did, what Dynamic 
regeneration they brought, before the movement went off-course. 
Pirsig marked that time as what should have been an evolutionary 
leap, a jump that did not occur. Of course we can't resurrect the 
same hippy movement now, such a thing would not be Dynamic or fresh. 
But we can and should go back and see where we have gone wrong since.

[John]
Well I definitely think the key is being open to the dynamic and wary 
of the static.  Any social system which represses free thinking and 
intellectual experimentation causes all our moral compassess to swing 
wildly away.

[Arlo]
I think we agree for the most part, even if there are nuances I'd 
pick at here. "Thinking" is never "free" in some asocial, acultural, 
objectivist utopia. You think through the shared symbols and shared 
historical dialogue of enculturation. As such, your thoughts will 
always be "structured" in certain ways. "We are suspended in 
language, our intellectual description of nature is always culturally 
derived" (as Pirsig quotes Bohr). But I think what you are saying 
here is the act by those in power to silence or eradicate voices that 
challenge their established power. I do note, however, that while an 
open dialogue must allow for voices of dissent, this must be built on 
a foundation where the voices of dissent aren't themselves attempting 
to destroy the dialogue.

[John]
Perhaps the most revolutionary insight is the evolutionary - that 
where we are is not where we need to aim for.  Change is not just an 
inevitable consequence of a random universe, it's a necessary 
ingredient for holistic life.  Growth and improvement is 
change.  Those come only from DQ, not sq.

[Arlo]
Well said. Agree.