[MD] Memes and themes of community dances

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Arlo]
It is sociality that gives(gave) rise to intellectual activity.

[John]
Here I'm not so sure.  It seems to me that there's an extreme individualism
that shines through Pirsig's work - the fact that it's an MoQ truism that the
levels are discrete and it's immoral for intellectual patterns to indulge in
social considerations somewhat obviate your point here, imo.

[Arlo]
What I think Pirsig offers is a great metaphysics of the "individual engaged in
collective activity". Too many modern thinkers are trapped in the false
dichotomy of "indivdual versus collective" as if the two "forces" were opposed,
or at war even. 

What we see are that individual patterns are the emergent results of the
collective activity of smaller individual patterns. Where we demarcate the
boundaries of an "individual" pattern of any sort is purely categorizational. 

What "extreme individualism" misses, and the MOQ (and from what I've read, CEI)
gets is the individual effort is always part of a collective activity, you can
not "skip" the social level in the evolutionary trajectory and go from
biological patterns to intellectual patterns. 

Its important to remember that "collective activity" consists of sitting in
your garage and repairing your motorcycle. Your voice, your tools, the machine
itself, the  repair manual, the garage, the coffee-maker, are all
socially-mediating and part of the activity. Bahktin, I think, would go further
to argue that the "real" activity that is going on is the mental dialogue you
are having with all the voices from your experience that are guiding your
activity.

[John]
Here's one part of the point I wanted to drive forward of Anderson's Crowd
Enhanced Innovation - that there is a complex ecosystem involved in innovation
and the chief innovators are only one part of that crowd. 

[Arlo]
I've mentioned an ecosystem analogy in another context, and I do like it. I
think the book A People's History of Science begins with such an analogy. In
education, we are looking at the classroom as an ecosystem as well (or should
be). One of the students I've worked with said about the ecosystem analogy is
that you can't escape the notion that any "individual" ecosystem is unavoidably
part of a larger ecosystem. The Everglades can be examined as a closed,
singular ecosystem, but is not isolated nor independent from larger ecosystems
which includes the continental plates, Arctic Oscillation, El Niño, etc.

Its all a matter of focus. Even a Global Ecosystem view must recognize the
interstellar ecosystem or even a galactic ecosystem of which it is a part. Now,
pragmatically you can speak about the Everglades ecosystem without having to
bring in the forces that exist at the level of the Galactic Ecosystem, but you
can't say they exist apart or independently of each other.

[John]
To my analysis then, the MoQ posits a crowd as competitively responding to DQ,
with one alpha dog, where as Crowd Enhanced Innovation posits the crowd
responding cooperatively and that's closer to the way real innovation happens.

[Arlo]
I don't see the MOQ, or rather Pirsig, positing any such thing. 

[John]
The other necessary aspects - the mentors, critics, superspreader, etc., are
just as vital to innovation as the innovators.  

[Arlo]
Absolutely.

[John]
This whole area of video-sharing also pertains to a recent topic of trust and
paranoia on MD that we've been discussing.  Video-sharing certainly obviates
the use of avatars, doesn't it.  It's not quite Ian's face-to-face
conversation, but it's much closer.

[Arlo]
I've said to Mary recently, that the topic of identity construction and
negotiation is a prime interest of mine.

To your point above, I'd ask how you would "know" that a person in a video
speaking as "me" is not an actor/actress I've paid to repeat lines? How do you
know the photos on my facebook page are "me" and not an actor? (Anyone on the
list has an open invite to friend me on Facebook). 

Just cutting the chase I'd say this, when you are talking to "someone" you are
always talking to an "avatar". We have this mistaken belief that the "self" is
almost an organ of the human body, and human bodies only have one self, and the
"real" self is dependent on the physical construction of the body.

Consider the case of transgendered individuals. There "selves" are one gender
while the bodies are another. I make the argument that there is not any one
"real self", but a plurality of "selves" that are constructed in-the-moment and
negotiated socially as the dialogue evolves.

That said, there are dishonest and subversive uses of avatars that should be
condemned. I mentioned to Mary what I consider, for purposes here, to be two
such practices. 

One, the creation of an avatar to play a "foil" or easily ridiculed adversary
to one's held position. Plato actually did this in his dialogues, so the
practice dates way back.

Two, the appearance of agent provocateurs, "avatars" used in a deliberate
attempt to derail or destroy a dialogue. The voices behind the Bradford/Hellier
events, for example, I am cautious that they find there way back on to subvert
dialogue here, with the goal of devolution and chaos.

There are other practices to condemn, as I've been reminded, such as the use of
avatars to threaten or assault another person. So my point isn't that because
the self is a plurality that there is nothing to condemn, but that the chase
after a "real self" only leads to frustration.