[MD] Food for Thought

[Heather Perella]

> [SA previously]
> 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. 

     Biological diversity is removed, trees for
buildings.  To use your line of thinking, then rocks
don't rid biology either.  Volcanic activity
replenishes the soil, and biological life has been
known to thrive.  Rocks don't kill animals, rocks
become a catalyst for evolution where niches open,
diversity may take hold.  Mammals didn't die from
rocks, but may actually thank rocks.  As for the
dinosaurs, they may thank rocks as well, for it is
thought birds are just dinosaurs, too.



> [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.

     sure.
 
> [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. 

     Sure, and as you point out, some ideas degenerate
society, such as the idea to cut down all the trees on
Easter Island.  Whoever thought it would be best to do
so, didn't think ahead, and to what this thought, when
implemented, would do to its' society.

 
> [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? 

     Sure.  This is why Pirsig shared nothing with us
aka dynamic quality.

     [Case]
> 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.

     If Pirsig stated this about the Greeks, and made
this appearance of the intellectual level an exception
to only first occur with the Greeks, Pirsig denies Zen
in ZMM.  I would say Pirsig is wrong, too, if he meant
such a thing.  Not to mention the Amerindians.


     [Case]
> 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 totally agree with you.  Ideas are ideas,
written or oral, they are ideas.


     [Case]
> 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.


     If one doesn't notice the dog is good, then this
problem is a true problem.



dog tryin' to learn where the run-line has newly been
placed,
SA

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