I have noticed a lot of conflict and confusion over the years of this discuss, on what is meant by social. Pirsig himself admitted as much in the Baggini interview when he said when it comes right down to it, it's hard to think of anything that isn't social in some way or another. And this is true because everything that is, is in relation. Therefore, I've been thinking a bit about the matter and have come to the following conclusions:
Social patterning has to be more than belonging to a set - so while the planets of our galaxy interact faintly with each other, they are not social because the special meaning of social must be restricted to life. In life we find three different types of society - Instinctive, imitative and codified. Instinctive includes the ants and the bees, which have social structures hard-wired into their DNA. Imitative sociability is that which we find amongst the wolves and the dolphins and all mammals (including humans) to a greater or lesser extent Codified, is that special realm of social patterning that is transmitted through oral or written rules that are passed from generation to generation which seems to be the exclusive domain of humans. And tho many of you don't like the term, another name for codified social patterns is, Religion. The third level is then, the Religious level. Thoughts? Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
