On 3 Dec 2000, at 14:27, Danila Oder wrote:
> Most of the discussion here recently is about MOQ as a DESCRIPTIVE
> system. I would really like to have a discussion about the usefulness
> of MOQ for giving PRESCRIPTIVE guidelines, by applying it to real-life
> situations. Especially I am interested in what it has to say about the
> environmental questions where an expanding human population 'needs' to
> damage or destroy an ecosystem to survive. How can ordinary citizens
> create a consistent INTELLECTUAL pattern using the MOQ that would be
> acceptable to everyone in society and preserve the environment?
Danila and MD.
Prescriptive? When the topic of "MOQ as a moral guide" was up
my conclusion was that a description is a prescription in a closed
feedback loop. The MOQ can never become an ethics - as in SOM -
because the latter's "moral" inevitably is Social value.
An aside on the environmental issue. I personally believe that the
human race passed its "point of no return" long ago, the only truly
sustainable existence was the hunter/gleaner's. The new frontier is
space. This is my grand "sub species aeternis" view, it does not
exclude preservation on a shorter scale though.
> One idea that might help: we should not think about biological
> entities like wolves, grass, fir trees, etc. as BIOLOGICAL value
> patterns only. They naturally exist in ecosystems, which can adapt to
> Dynamic Quality (example, a forest fire) as a whole even though the
> individual biological entities are destroyed. But ecosystems are not
> "Social", that is parallel to human SOCIAL value patterns, because
> they're not a higher level that uses the lower level for its own
> needs.
> Or do they?
Interesting slant on the Biological-Social relationship Danila. Is
what we call an eco-system some embryonic social level? We
have discussed bee-hives, ant-hills and wolf-packs - even the Gaia
theory (Ken Clark) - but a wood or a swamp as social value? I
believe that all life forms have an effect on environment and thereby
create a system that react to changes. In some sense it trancends
the individual organisms ...yet.
There are grey zones between the levels where one can't fully say
what is what. There are great problems in determining the line
between matter and life, so IMO the biology/society-phenomenon
you point to are of the same fuzzy nature. The Society-Intellect
border indeterminacy is even more pronounced - we have fretted a
lot over this during the last year(s).
NB! See Magnus' message about the dimensional view of the levels
which solves this problem.
A most important tenet of the MOQ is that an advanced (complex/
ambiguous) pattern of the lower level becomes the carrier of the
higher - "goes off on a purpose of its own" as Pirsig says. The
human organism isn't a truer biological pattern than a wolf, but
complex enough to become the carrier of social value which - in
turn - advanced far enough to carry Intellectual value. There are,
however, many "dead" social ends lower on the biological scale.
Did I fuzz things further?
Bo
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