[MD] atheistic and content

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
I've often wanted to agree with Platt and Ham about the individual, 
but I also am convinced of the Buddhist's no-self.

[Arlo]
Platt and Ham remain trapped by the political dichotomy they can't 
see past. To them its an absolute "either-or". Either there is 
nothing but the Supremacy of the Glorious Individual, or there is 
nothing but the Evil Collective. This is there own hang-up, I would 
not let it bog *you* down.

Platt and Ham are correct in that each "human individual" has, by 
virtue of it's biological boundedness, a unique sensory trajectory as 
it experiences "the world". There is little doubt of this. The 
sensory information your eyes transmit to your brain is unique to 
your biologically-bound perspective in the cosmos.

And as far as that goes, they are correct. Where they fail is in 
recognizing that this is only half of what makes us "us". The other 
half is social, and derives as the biological being appropriates a 
social reality, a "collective consciousness" of narratives, stories, 
dialogues, metaphors, art, song, dance, roles, understandings and so on.

It is this meeting of the unique biological-bounded sensory 
experience and its encoding via a socially-bound symbolic milieu that 
informs that "we" are.

This, I take it, is exactly what Pirsig meant by restating Descartes 
dictum as "20th century French culture exists, therefore I think, 
therefore I am."

Thus there is no "self" in any objectivist sense at all. But it does 
hold pragmatic value to us, which is why it persists.

My advice is not to get bungeed up by the individual-collectivist 
strawman. Like all patterns, an "individual" or "collective" is 
merely a matter of focus. And as your focus shifts up and down, this 
changes accordingly. Elevating either over of the other is a 
political cup-trick.