[MD] moq_discuss Digest, Vol 7, Issue 77

[Sojosoniq]

Hello to one and all... I've been "lurking" for a few days now but once upon
a time (many moons ago) was subscribed to this forum.  I'm receiving these
posts in digest form so I apologize for the delay.

I wanted to primarily respond to this, as well as similar posts I've seen:

>----- From: Horse <horse at darkstar.uk.net>
>
>Hi Arlo, Steve, Case et.al
>
>Sorry for the delay - kids take up a lot of time! Anyway, where was I?
>
>In between various other activities I've been mulling over what it is
>that constitutes the difference between what appear to be social
>patterns of value in biological networks such as ants, bees etc. and
>social patterns of value which we apply to human societies. After
>several junked posts I came up with some tentative ideas which I'd like
>to try out on you to see if they make sense. As usual, criticisms are
>most welcome.
>The first, and I think the most important idea that popped up was the
>difference in structure. Ant, bee and wasp colonies/nest are monolithic
>whereas human societies are distributed.

Some human societies, perhaps such as the USA, are definitely "distributed"
in the sense you describe.  Others such as England (in the past, such as in
the year 1066) were not, and when the head of the monolith (king) was
removed it caused great upheaval similar to what would happen to any ant
nest when its queen is killed/removed.

I'm not convinced there IS any difference between the term "social level" as
it applies to ants and humans.  Clearly there are different types of
societies amongst humans but thats also true with animals.  A wolf pack is
organized much differently than a bee colony yet both are "societies", the
same way small feudal kingdoms and multi-party democracies are both human
"societies".

I think what's needed is some clarification on what exactly the term "social
level" or "society" means, independent of where it is applied (humans, ants,
etc).  I'll toss this out there and say ANY society is a superorganism
consisting of individual (biological) organisms working together for the
superorganism's benefit.

I realize it may seem like a stretch to think of perhaps the Soviet Union or
the Navajo tribe as a living organism unto itself but it seems to fit the
same way looking at an ant colony as a single, living organism fits just
fine for biologists.  Societies act just like individual organisms in many
ways, and I believe Pirsig's term for the human society in which he lived
was "The Giant".

Since the MOQ is predicated upon mirrored levels, look at how a biological
organism (say like an ant) contains the level beneath it.  The individual
cells of the single ant are all working to survive, to take in nourishment,
to fend off attacks, to excrete and yet they are united together in the
"superorganism" of the individual ant itself, just as each individual cell
is uniting organic molecules like proteins and amino acids.

In short, a "society" is composed of biological components (individuals) in
exactly the same manner in which a biological individual (animal, person,
ant, etc) is composed of living cells (individual) that are themselves
composed of organized molecules.  Society is one level "up" from biology
just as biology is one level "up" from molecular material.

I know there's some inherent cultural bias that finds thinking of human
societies similar to animal societies as "distasteful" but I see no rational
distinction between them in terms of their fundamental makeup.