[MD] Distinguishing Levels

[david buchanan]

DM asked dmb:
So do you think this linkage makes it hard to draw a clear 3rd and 4th level 
distinction?

dmb answers:
No, I don't think that's the main problem. I suspect one of the biggest 
reasons is that the conventional concept of mind (SOM) includes both the 
third and fourth levels. Even with somebody like Rorty, myths and 
intellectual concepts all exist in the same linguistic soup without any way 
to rank or sort them. So I think a good amount of the confusion stems from a 
SOMish hangover.

But I don't really see why it should cause as much trouble as it has. I 
mean, my undergraduate work was in the history of ideas, specifically the 
Modern West. I even did my senior thesis on Hitler. And of course you know 
how the social/intellectual distinction is used to explain the conflicts 
between fascism and democracy, etc.. So when I first read Lila, the whole 
thing just clarified a lot of things for me. It really made sense to me. So 
I think it works and I don't think its all that hard to see either.

I gotta say that Wilber has helped me see the distinction too. His system 
has more stages, more levels, but that's really just a matter of having a 
more detailed picture of the same hierarchy. The thing I find very useful -- 
even tasty -- about his work is that you can really start to see how the 
stages of development in the culture's evolutionary history are basically 
recapitulated in the developmental process of each individual. You could 
even think of the human maturation process as a matter of getting each 
person up to speed. As Wilber paints it, each culture has a developmental 
center of gravity. Some people are behind the average and some are out at 
the edge of evolution, so to speak. I think its pretty cool to see how these 
stages work at the individual and collective dimensions at the same time. 
Which reminds me...

I think there is another reason why there has been so much confusion and 
lack of agreement about where to draw the line between social and 
intellectual values; pet theories. Sorry to say it, but I think that some 
people create confusion on this matter for self-serving reasons. They 
dislike and resent the implications of this ranking for various reasons. You 
know, nameless people who are a little too eager to defend tradition over 
intellect. You know, cause they love Jesus or Ayn Rand much more than they 
love to make sense.

Thanks for asking.

dmb

I think history can serve as a crude and simple rule of thumb when there is 
a question about whether this or that belongs to the social or intellectual 
level. Just ask yourself if the "item" in question pre-dates Socrates or 
not.

Its crude because the Egyptians and Babylonians had math, astronomy, 
architecture and stuff like that. This sort of knowledge was known to very 
few and for the most part was used to serve the religion and the power 
structure. It was a tool put in the service of social values. Back then, 
such quasi-intellectual tools were still embedded in the social realm. And I 
suppose that's how it has to be. Before the human animal lived in even the 
most primary kind of hunter-gatherer societies, they must have lived like a 
pack of wolves. And where do we draw that line between a pack and a tribe 
when one is just about to evolve into the other, when they're so close, like 
a virus barely meets the criteria to count as organic. I mean, stuff on the 
cusp is always gonna be a little tougher to grapple with, but most stuff is 
not on the cusp. Kings and cops and armies and wealth and fame and power and 
love and hate and war and gods and heros and myths and religions all that 
sort of stuff has been around since way, way before Socrates. And they're 
still with us in one form or another.

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