[MD] Food for Thought

[Michael Hamilton]

On 12/17/06, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Hamilton said:
> 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.
>
> dmb replies:
> Right, the idea of freedom was presented as part of this principle a few
> days and posts ago. I never meant to imply that this oppostion was
> "complete" or that the law of gravity could be destroyed. The idea is simply
> that each new level finds a way to overcome the limitations imposed by its
> parent level. I mean, opposition is the means of emancipation, if you will.

I think the idea of "opposition" obscures that way in which (for
instance) intellectual patterns of value use society to achieve
intellectual purposes. The stuff you've been talking about seems to be
better summed up by "emancipation" that brute "opposition", although
it does involve opposition to the complete hegemony and domination
exercised by (for instance) society.

> Michael also said:
> 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.
>
> dmb says:
> Well, I think the idea that "society is a biological strategy" is common
> sense among educated Westerners but it contradicts the MOQ. I don't think a
> pack of wolves is what we mean when we say "society", except as an analogy.
> I'd be willing to reconsider this position if it were discovered that wolves
> had developed from a religion or built a city or something like that. Until
> then I shall continue to believe that pack of animals is just that.

Okay, if you're not willing to recognise pack behaviour as rudimentary
social organisation, then how about the division of labour in
primitive human societies? Having one group doing the hunting, another
doing the cooking, another gathering fuel, another child-rearing,
another tending to the health of the group.... etc. Such social
organisation undoubtedly advances the survival of the species. One
isolated human has less chance of meeting his basic biological needs
than as part of a well-organised group. So society is a great
biological strategy, but it has to mollify competitive biological
instincts in order to achieve its aims. In the long run, emancipation
is beneficial to the receding level as well as the emerging one.

Regards,
Mike