[MD] Individual v Collective

[Michael Hamilton]

Hello all,

While I agree with (and like) Arlo's point about collective emergence,
I still want to stick to my (now somewhat rusted) guns about the
emergence of what we're calling 'intellect' being closely related the
emergence of _a sense of_ individuality and the sense of the human
self as an atomised unit. What I'm suggesting is that, rather than the
4th level being about individuals, it has a great deal to do with
individuals being aware of themselves _as individuals_, with their own
unique subjective preferences, beliefs and foibles. Self-awareness.

While it's good to be reminded that we are all tied together by our
participation in the cultural mythos, we shouldn't dismiss the sense
of individuality as an illusion, or (to use a phrase from Paul's blog)
as an entirely maladaptive belief. Sure, it can have maladaptive
consequences when we forget about the mythos and the vital
interdependence of all life of Earth. But self-awareness,
self-consciousness, the sense of individuality, respresents a big
evolutionary leap from the 'tribal consciousness' that manifests
itself both in the emergent behavior of ant colonies and in Hitler's
brutal subordination of the individual to the interests of the
Volksgemeinschaft (people's community).

I still think it's no coincidence that this self-awareness emerged at
around the same time as science really took off. I remember hearing
somewhere that Descartes' over-arching project was to create a 'solid
philosophical foundation for the sciences'. Whether he succeeded or
not, I reckon he was the main philosopher in bestowing subjective
awareness upon members of the Western mythos - and one of the key
culprits in entrenching SOM so far into the mythos that it has become
a maladaptive belief.

Regards,
Mike

On 8/14/06, ARLO J BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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