----- Original Message -----
From: "Arlo Bensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 10:36 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Regarding The Fundamental Nature of The Intellectual Level
[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.
Your definition of 'deliberate and purposeful' is interesting. I cannot
say what you describe is done without deliberation and purpose, but they are
not focused on the improvement of the Social Level, which is a part of the
MOQ definition of the Intellectual Level's function.
[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.
I cannot imagine a time without all of them since static patterns of value
are conceptual entities.
[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.x
Maybe I should have stated ritual and habit below consciousness. I have not
denied the importance of the Social Level. And I do not remember writing
anything about 'Dynamic Freedom'. Maybe those were RMP's word from a quote.
Freedom for me, at the moment, is understanding emptiness. Or, the fact
that patterns, in general, are interrelated, ever-changing _conceptual_
entities. Analogies, every last one of them, all the way down.
[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.
I like RMP's MOQ-worldview. (Real is too static for me.) The four levels
take into consideration all the 'stuff ' the West has invented and points to
the wisdom of the East. It's very exciting.
BTW, did you see that spider on caffeine?
Marsha
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