[MD] Individual v Collective

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

Ian, SA, Squonk, All...

At the risk of restating SA's caution, I think the "individual-collective" split
is a largely false one. Especially considered as somehow (in any way) related
to the "social-intellectual" level distinction. ALL MOQ levels contain
"individuals", and as those "individuals" engage "collectively" the next level
up emerges.

Individual biological patterns emerge out of the collective activity of
individual inorganic patterns.

Individual social patterns emerge out of the collective biological activity.

Individual intellectual patterns emerge out of the collective social activity.

To say that "one level is (more) individual and another is (more) collective" is
a fool's quest to grant power to one half of a dialogic pair.

As for the social-intellectual description, I have come to see one problem being
that we use "intellectual patterns" (symbols) to bound social-level activity,
and as such confuse the intellectual concept from the activity it seeks to
describe. "Family", I believe, is an intellectual pattern (as specifically
formulated) that seeks to conceptualize particular social behavioral patterns.
"The Church", as a symbolic term, is an intellectual pattern that describes
social level patterns of behavior. In the same way that an "atom" is an
intellectual pattern describing particular inorganic pattterns. "Business", to
use a final example, as the "buying and selling of things" is an intellectual
formulation of social level activity.

The trouble is, that because we are part of the collective activity that gives
rise to intellectual patterns we think we "own" them. In the same way the cell
must feel it "owns" the body. Now, the cell is a vital part of the body, but it
is not the body. "Calculus", an intellectual pattern, exists independently of
any one person. Indeed, it is a pattern that has emerged over time from the
collective activity of many dispersed both geographically and temporally. It is
a GIANT that feeds off collective social activity in the same way Pirsig's
GIANT (the city) was a social pattern that fed off collective biological
activity.

The power of the emergent system is that it is not only bottom-up in generation,
but top-down in informing. That is, the intellectual level manipulates the
social level to suit its own ends, as a strand of DNA manipulates inorganic
patterns to serve it's ends. This gets close (I think) to memetic theory, where
memes are independent patterns who "use" (to use the colorful word) people for
their own propagation in the same way a gene "uses" DNA. (But, I am no expert
on memes, so I could be wrong).

More later... of to a BBQ (gotta feed the biological patterns...)

Arlo