[MD] Food for Thought

[Michael Hamilton]

DMB, Case, all

I wonder if it'd be better to think of the law of opposition more as a
"law of emancipation". Free speech doesn't really oppose society - you
need to have society to have speech - but free speech mitigates the
control exercised by society. It's emancipation from controlling
structures, not complete opposition to them, that makes room for DQ.
Similarly, biological life can't change the facts of gravity and
entropy, but it does refuse to be a slave to them.

Also, I agree with Case that "society is a biological strategy". A
pack is stronger than a lone wolf. Similarly, a society with access to
science and technology is stronger than a society so regimented that
it stifles change and discovery. Nonetheless, I think society can be
considered as an emancipation from the law of the jungle. Loyalty and
empathy mean you don't have to spend your whole life sharpening your
claws and looking over your shoulder.

Regards,
Mike

On 12/16/06, Case <Case at ispots.com> wrote:
>
> [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 Nothing whatsoever about biology superseded inorganic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.
>
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