----- Original Message -----
From: "Arlo Bensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Regarding The Fundamental Nature of The Intellectual Level
[Marsha]
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.
[Arlo]
I think there are many examples of deliberate and purposeful social
activities whose aim is to improve the overall social condition. When
early humans began to cultivate food crops, rather than relying on
foraging, the overall social conditions of humans improved considerably.
When a new baseball stadium is built it may improve the social situation
of that city in many ways, from increasing trade and tourism, to
restaurant revenues, to giving families a place to bond on sunny summer
afternoon.
That is, there is organic change from within the social level, it is not
something "fixed" and reliant on intellectual patterns for change. Of
course, intellectual patterns can exert a tremendous force on social
patterns, changing them drastically. But if you trace the history of
social evolution from earliest tribes of humans to, say, the pre-Socratic
civilizations, you see a steady and purposeful evolution towards
improvement in social conditions.
It's an interesting story, isn't it?
It is for this reason I say we are not talking about
deliberate/non-deliberate or free/non-free distinctions, but differing
levels of evolution in which deliberation and freedom are integral parts
of each, just as automatism and conformity are integral parts of each.
Please describe and explain the deliberation and purposefulness of each
level? If you would enjoy adding 'freedom', be my guest. You keep flipping
it into the conversation. You can say the story anyway you'd like to.
RMP:
"The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover an ultimate
meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its historical
purpose has been to help a society find food, detect danger, and defeat
enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it invents
for this purpose."
Are you equating 'intellect' with the Intellectual Level? But more to the
point, I'm more interested in the fact that intellect invents the concepts.
Too many, I think, are looking for descriptive differences between the
levels (individual/collective, free/conformitive, deliberate/automatic,
DQ-responsive/DQ-nonresponsive) when, to me, these are all part of every
level, its just that the range of agency increasing exponentially as one
moves up the levels.
All levels are concepts so of course intellect has been participating. What
do you mean by the expression "its just that the range of agency increasing
exponentially as one moves up the levels. What exactly does this mean?
When humans transitioned from biological to social beings, their range of
agency was vastly increased. The range of opportunity for action,
deliberate and purposeful actions, made the constrictions of the
biological level appear to be a prison. However, this appearance masked
the fact that the transition from inorganic to biological beingness also
vastly increased the range of agency for biological creatures. The freedom
of the biological level made the inorganic look to be the prison. On all
of these levels, however, the beings within are given a wider range of
freedoms than the previous. And so it is not a matter of "this level is
free, that level is conforming", but "this level extends the repertoire of
wo/man's agency exponentially". Conformity, or as I prefer "habituated
activity", is evidenced as much on the intellectual level as on the social
level. Indeed, the entire thrust of Pirsig's criticism in ZMM is on
Western Intellectual Conformity, the static patterns that have produced
habituated intellectual activity that reifies S/O duality.
I am so not on the same academic page as you. You're discussing exerting
power and influence. I'm after how it's all a wisp of momentary mental
illusion which can represent any number of different points-of-view.
It is the same with the individual-collective descriptors. All levels
contain "individuals in collective activity". There is no one level of
"the individual" and another of "the collective".
To me the individual is one of those illusions. Then a collective could
only be???
All levels,
depending on the context of one's focus, are the activity of "individuals
in collective activity". This describes the inorganic as well the
intellectual levels.
No individual. No collective. For me, ever-changing, collections of
overlapping, interrelated, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual,
static patterns of value.
> Yes, saw the spider on caffeine. Very illuminating. Or were you
referring to the spoof video with the spider on crack?
They may be one in the same. For the record, I've never been in the same
room with crack or cocaine. Caffeine is bad enough.
Marsha
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