[MD] Social Ants?

[Platt Holden]

[Steve quotes Pirsig]
> “What the Metaphysics of Quality indicates is that the twentieth century
> intellectual faith in man's basic goodness as spontaneous and natural is
> disastrously naïve.  The ideal of a harmonious society in which everyone
> without coercion cooperates happily with everyone else for the mutual
> good of all is a devastating fiction. It isn't consistent with
> scientific fact.  Studies of bones left by the cavemen indicate that
> cannibalism, not cooperation, was a pre-society norm. Primitive tribes
> such as the American Indians have no record of sweetness and cooperation
> with other tribes.  They ambushed them, tortured them, dashed their
> children's brains out on rocks.  If man is basically good, then maybe it
> is man's basic goodness which invented social institutions to repress
> this kind of biological savagery in the first place.”
> 
> To sum up, intellect versus society is not an individual versus the
> collective issue. As Pirsig points out above, the individual free of
> society’s coersion (socialization) is not some uncorrupted superman but
> rather an animal.) 
 
We have seen Nazi and Communist societies in the 20th century commit 
the most horrendous biological savagery ever recorded. So to say social 
institutions have repressed such savagery is wrong on its face. In fact 
certain social institutions still promote biological savagery today 
such as Hamas and Al Qaeda.

It would be more in line with reality if Pirsig had qualified his 
statement by saying that WITHIN A GIVEN SOCIETY, social moral patterns 
maintain order and cohesion by fighting biological crime, bother 
internal and external. That a given society itself is capable of 
biological savagery against other societies, and at times even with 
itself (our Civil War) is not in doubt.

What makes the individual level superior to the social level is the 
recognition by individuals of society's role in keeping criminal 
biological elements at bay who would like nothing better than to steal 
an individual's property and crush her freedom to work, speak, travel, 
worship and otherwise needlessly interfere with her pursuit of 
happiness. With the personal values that comprise the intellectual 
level such as hard work, personal responsibility, self-discipline, 
individual initiative, craftsmanship, commitment to excellence, thrift, 
delayed gratification, honor of achievement, optimism, life long 
pursuit of knowledge, etc., firmly established as the highest moral 
order, reversion to senseless animal behavior by freedom-loving 
individuals becomes a rarity. 

Platt