[Marsha]
Maybe in an everything-is-connect-to-everything sort of
way. This battle between the collective and the individual seems a
waste of time. If the individual is an illusion, and it is, then the
collective is a group of illusions.
[Arlo]
Absolutely. Which is why I've said many, many times it is never
"individuals v. collectives", that's just talk-radio blather. What it
is is about activity, the activity of "individuals within
collectives". One theory I am fond of is that of "Activity Theory",
derived from the work of Vygotsky, that looks at the interactive
dynamics deriving from "individuals within group using resources and
constrained by rules working towards the creation of objects". A
common diagram of human activity is this:
http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/past/nlc2004/proceedings/symposia/symposium7/mcateer_marsden_files/image005.jpg
Thus human interactions are "understand human activities as complex,
socially situated phenomena" (Wikipedia) rather than the polarized
"subjectivism" or "objectivism" of traditional Western thought.
[Marsha]
The patterns in the Intellectual Level seem to function, as Peter has
suggested, more to solve problems by manipulating symbols in a more
deliberate manner.
[Arlo]
I've suggested before that a good way to frame the
social-intellectual distiction is not in "symbol/no-symbol" but that
the emergence of the intellectual level stems from the time when
wo/man started thinking about symbols as objects in themselves. That
is, certainly the social level is bemarked by the advent of symbolic
manipulations, indeed I'd argue that the dialogic formation of symbol
systems is the point of emergence of the social level. But as our
symbol systems evolved in complexity, wo/man eventually began
investigating symbols as objects of inquiry. We began "using symbols
to examine symbols". At the social level, wo/man agreed to term
"blue" to refer to certain patterns of experience. At the
intellectual level, wo/man asked "what is blueness? where does it
come from? is it universal? is it in my head or out in nature?"
Thus I would not say its a "more deliberate" way of manipulating
symbols, social level symbolic use is also very deliberate. When I
use language to ask my grocery if he has any organic apples, I am
manipulating symbols very deliberately. When I think about the
category "apple" and what it is, and what it is not, and why, I am
also manipulating symbols very deliberately, its just that I've made
"appleness", a symbol, the object of my inquiry. Math is a great
example. At the social level, wo/man first came up with symbols to
describe multiple occurances, such as "one" or "three". At the
intellectual level, these symbols ("one" "three") became
objects-in-themselves, abstracted from experience, and people were
able to build elaborate symbolic relational systems. That is, when
"one" ceased to be a modifer for "apples" (one apple) and became a
real thing in and of itself.
You know, thinking about "wo/man" and the wife-totting pioneers of
yore, there are many examples of gender-patriarchy reification in
language. Consider that when addressing a group of males, one could
begin "hey guys", and when addressing a group of males and females
one could begin "hey guys", and even when addressing a group of
females it is common to begin "hey guys", but this is completely
non-reversible. You could address of group of females "hey gals", but
for a mixed gender group or all male group this would be taken as
near offensive, if not ridiculing. But nearly everyone, from males to
females, adopts this convention as normal.
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