[MD] Food for Thought

[Case]

[dmb in response to Arlo]
Again, the idea is simply that biological values are about controlling and
overcoming the forces of nature while the social level values are aimed at
controlling and overcoming the forces of biology and the intellectual level
is aimed at controlling and overcoming the forces of society. 

[Case]
This view is so guided as to be worse that wrong. If wrong it would hold the
possibility of being benign but it is malignant through and through. Biology
is in no way in opposition to the inorganic. Biology flows naturally out of
the inorganic. Nothing whatsoever about biology superseded inorganic
processes. Biological systems are entirely dependant on inorganic balance to
exist. A Goldilocks Zone is just the place where biological activity has the
possibility to exist because the inorganic conditions are right to support a
high level of complex interactions.

If a biological system were to exhaust a resource or substantially change
the inorganic balance in the wrong direction it could end the possibility of
biology. To say that there is a "biological level" is to say that at a
certain point factors other than the inorganic become meaningful. Biological
systems begin to act on other biological systems. Interactions between and
among, biological systems result in a whole new order of relationships. But
these do not supersede inorganic relationships.


Further more the idea that a higher level can subdue or subvert a lower
level for any length of time is absurd. The higher level depends totally on
stability at the lower level. Higher levels are disrupted or out right
destroyed by imbalance at the lower level. Big rocks fall out of the sky
pushing reset on biology. Hurricanes wipe out a city. Viruses mutate and
disrupt social relationships. It just doesn't work the other way around. 

One of the problems in looking at higher levels than biological is Pirsig's
refusal to acknowledge that society is a biological strategy. By assigning
it solely to mankind he cuts it and any serious understanding of it, off
from its roots.