Horse and Bo: Horse wrote: > > A beehive is a society (SocPOVs) in every respect, just as any Giant. Make > a comparison with the Victorian pre WWI European states. They sent their > soldiers to the trenches just like any beehive does when danger threatens. > The soldiers died mindlessly just as the bees, I'm sure the soldiers thought > a lot about what they were doing but they were trained not to. The Giant > had taught them to protect the Giant with their lives and they did. > > Another very social aspect of beehives is the fact that it's still the > same beehive, no matter how many bees lives or dies, (almost). Just as > the Giant is still the same Giant no matter how many citizens, mayors > or schools get replaced. > "The blocks are organized in the order of evolution, with each higher block more recent and more Dynamic than the lower ones. The block at the top contains such static intellectual patterns as theology, science, philosophy, mathematics. The placement of the intellect in this position makes it superior to society, biology and inorganic patterns but still inferior to Dynamic Quality. The Metaphysics of Quality says there can be many competing truths and it is value that decides among them. " [...] "The social patterns in the next box down include such institutions as family, church and government. They are the patterns of culture that the anthropologist and sociologist study. In the third box are the biological patterns: senses of touch, sight hearing, smell and taste." (R.M.Pirsig, SODV) Pirsig puts the Inorganic and Biological level into a "objective" frame, while Intellectual and social into a "Subjective" frame. When we face the 4 levels of experience, we must use a good intellectual (metaphysical) tool. Objectivity is useful in the objective frame, while it's useless in the subjective frame. I think we can objectively study the bees behavior and get good results; at the contrary we all know that the same objectivity is totally useless if used to understand social patterns. I well understand the analogies between beehives and cities. But there are also a lot of differences. Principally bees have (seemingly) always a similar behavior, and no chance to change it. At the contrary people can act in various ways according to the different social patterns they are participating ( Life in NY City is very different by Svaalbard or Timbuktu....), and these patterns are evolving entities. This is the main reason of the uselessness of objectivity in social level experiences. "The Metaphysics of Quality says there can be many competing truths and it is value that decides among them". There's no utility in a taxonomic discussion about the true (!) classification of patterns in levels. Every interpretation have value, but IMHO it's more valuable to put bees in the bio-Level of experience. But also it's important to note (and I think I agree with Bo) that even if levels are discrete, surely there are contact points. The "social behavior" of bees (and ants, wolves, apes....) is maybe a sort of biologic attempt of creating a new kind of patterns. All these attempts failed, but one. Only humans were able to create a new level. tks Marco. MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
