[MD] -elitist ideas

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
What about your use of 'betterness'?  It's a word you've used as an 
equivalent of 'value'.  Doesn't this 'betterness' imply a comparative 
(subjective) value?

[Arlo]
Again, this comparative state is experienced within the confines of 
the level in question. In the moment of direct experience, an amoeba 
experiences value (in the case of the acid, this is experience as a 
low-quality state). In that moment, I suppose you could say the 
amoeba becomes the "subject" and the low-quality environment the 
"object", but again this is not to suggest the "subjectiveness" of 
the amoeba is anything like the complex "subjectiveness" we 
conceptualize on the social and intellectual levels.  In fact, I'd 
say the amoeba never experiences "subject/object". Having no symbolic 
representation of "self" or "other", the amoeba is "trapped" in 
primary, direct experience limited not only to inorganic-biological 
value, but to pretty unsophisticated biological value as well (a 
"wolf", for example, experiences a much more complex range of 
biological value).