[MD] Know-how - an aside

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
I agree with Platt's insistence on the importance of the individual

[Arlo]
Ah, what the hell... its a slow day, I'll bite.

The problem with "Platt's insistence" is that it is, in effect, 
tunnel vision. "Individuals" and "collectives" (if you will) exist at 
all levels of focus, there are "individual inorganic patterns" when 
the lens is adjusted one way, which suddenly become a collective 
activity of patterns when the lens is readjusted. Up and down the 
MOQ's hierarchy we can go, zooming in and zooming out, finding 
"individuals" and then seeing that these patterns are forever 
contextualized, and that our "analytic knife", which serves us 
discrete individuals, is a tool and nothing more.

The "individual" is important, sure, and so is its collective 
activity, and the patterns formed by this activity, "new" individual 
patterns at greater levels of evolution.

[Marsha]
I find no independent controlling self, only a flow of patterns.

[Arlo]
Yes. "Individuals" and "collectives" are simply contextual frames of 
reference. On one hand, theoretically compartmentalizing, say, the 
"human heart" as a discrete and isolated pattern may help us 
understand it to some degree. But so does refocusing and seeing the 
whole body holistically, as a "larger" individual pattern built from 
the collective activity of smaller patterns.

Que the "commie" drumbeat...