[Marsha]
When I'm hungry I eat, when I tired I sleep. When I paint, I
paint. I try to keep it all pretty simple.
[Arlo]
Yes, but unless when the hunger bell dings in your head you reach for
whatever is in arm's reach and grab it and eat it, I bet that you too
engage in deliberate planning of how to satiate that biological
craving. Maybe you think "Pizza? No, I had that yesterday. Chinese?
Other side of town and I'm low on gas. The Burger Emporium? Well the
waiter there was rude to me last time so that's out.". Or maybe you
think, "My daughter is having me over for a big dinner tonight, so
maybe I'll skip lunch of just have a little yogurt"... Point it, we
manipulate symbols deliberately and purposefully on the social level.
[Marsha]
I imagine there were intellectual patterns before there evolved an
Intellectual Level.
[Arlo]
I can imagine a time when organic patterns existed but biological
patterns had not yet emerged. I can also imagine a time when
biological patterns existed but social patterns had not yet emerged.
Why not a time when social patterns existed but intellectual patterns
had not yet emerged? Are you suggesting that social and intellectual
patterns co-evolved, meaning appeared at the same time?
Indeed, I'd argue that it is the biological level that is
"automatic", and the social level brought autonomy and the ability to
plan and enact deliberate plans into everyday activity. Before the
social level, when an ape was hungry, he ate. He couldn't mediate his
actions by thinking "let me hold off on eating this banana because
the other apes are planning a large feast tonight". It is the ability
to manipulate abstract social symbols (language) that brought freedom
"from the laws of the jungle" to the fledgling human tribes. With
language they could plan, debate plans and courses of action,
determine best routes and optimum strategies, and then negotiate the
implementation of those decisions. Human tribes could observe in the
world in a whole new way, a shared social way, that freed them from
the immediate moment and set them on course of migration, discovery,
crafting, storytelling, dance, exploration and a myriad of behaviors
made possible by social language.
[Marsha]
To me social level patterns are ritual and habit.
[Arlo]
Ritual and habit exist at both the social and intellectual level.
Indeed, said this way I'd say that "ritual and habit" are simply
other terms for "static patterns", and the intellectual level is,
too, static patterns. The Dynamic Freedom you mention is outside all
of these levels, but is manifest on each level by the agency afforded
by that particular level. The social level brought a great deal of
agency and freedom to human behavior. And wo/man continues to this
day to act upon this freedom brought by the social level. In the same
way, the intellectual level has brought its own freedoms and affordances.
[Marsha]
From my point of view, reification of any kind is illusion. Seems
to be a worldwide convention, but it's illlusion just the same.
[Arlo]
Agree. What I picture here is the analysis of the motorcycle in ZMM.
We break the world apart in certain ways and then cling to the idea
that those parts are real in a primary kind of way.
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