[MD] Food for Thought

[Case]

> [Case]
> 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. 

[SA]
This is one point that dmb, Arlo, Ian, and you
(Case) seem to be revolving around and debating - the
direction.  Case, you state above it doesn't work the
other way around.  Yet, cities are built by societies
that remove all biology from before its' circling
path.  

[Case]
Society is a biological strategy. A city is an extension of biological
processes not a removal of them. 

[SA]
I also agree with what you state above. 
Hurricanes wipe out a city.  Direction is not the
sticking point that is to be in accord with these
levels.  Direction goes both ways, and evolution can
happen within levels.  Direction crosses over
distinctive levels, so, direction isn't helping in
providing distinction.  Direction is removing
distinction and just showing how the levels transact
and overlap during evolution.  Pirsig states, a moral
intellect is to help society.  Society is a foundation
for intellect.  Ok, but what of this distinction.

[Case]
Social patterns may influence biological patterns certainly but to the
extent that social patterns are in opposition to biological patterns the
society fails. The social practices of eating ones young or of celibacy are
in opposition to biological reality. If a society practiced either
exclusively, it would end in a single generation.

[SA] 
Ideas are to circulate within society.  Ideas are
intellectual, but may streamline into society.  Do
ideas quit being ideas upon the intellectual level,
and become ideas that are now strictly social level
units?  What is an idea strictly upon the social
level?  It seems that ideas no matter where they are,
are ideas, something intellectual, even if society
uses them.  That would be an intellectual society.  

[Case]
The only ideas I can think of that would be in opposition to social
structure would be those that advocate eliminating social interaction.
Hermits maybe? Madmen bent of total worldwide distruction? Ideas seem to be
about codifying social structures. Explaining them. 

[SA]
A society involved morally with an intellect that is
helping.  Is this it?  If we get into which ideas help
society, well, that depends upon societies acceptance,
right?  Ideas may help or not help, society still
chooses, as long as society notices code of art,
dynamic morality, which is an intellectual latch upon
nothing, thus, nothing (dynamic quality) is shining
through intellect(s) and society is accepting this
help, in which dq is accepted.

[Case]
Ideas attain the intellectual level only when shared or expressed. If I have
an idea in my head that I do not voice or does not affect how I behave, how
could it be on the intellectual level? The intellectual level is about ideas
that are expressed. The level itself is the collection of ideas that have
been expressed and continue to be expressed. I think Pirsig is wrong to say
that the Greeks invented the intellectual level. I think it the intellectual
level is history, that is writing and language. Prehistoric people codified
social practices through an oral tradition. They passed ideas from
generation to generation verbally. Historic people communicate across much
longer periods of time. Thus we talk about what the Greeks and Egyptians had
to say.

I think one of the problems in distinguishing between the social and
intellectual levels is that we live in historic times and social patterns
have been expressed as intellectual patterns for about the past 8,000 years.