[MD] What is SOM?

[Krimel]

-----Original Message-----
From: David M [mailto:davidint at blueyonder.co.uk] 
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 2:39 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] What is SOM?


> [Krimel]
> I think this ability to see subjects and object (in a totally
> nonmetaphysical sense) it one of the things that sets our species apart 
> from other primates. Arlo has brought this up several time in other 
> contexts. We can see ourselves as either subject or objects as static or 
> dynamic beings.We can see others as objects or identify with them as other

> subjects.
> But I do think that experience and the differentiation of subjects and
> object from experience only makes sense in the context of someone making 
> the differentiation. Meaning and purpose and understanding do not reside 
> in the inorganic level. They arise from biological processes which do have

> goals and purposes.
>

DM: Point being babies have to do some work to start to differentiate out
their experience into self and not-self, and not-self things and not-self 
others.
The whole metaphysical S-O split takes it further and MOQ suggests too far.

[Krimel]
I suspect few things in psychology have been studied cross-culturally as
much as this. Infants in a variety of cultures go through this process and
while cultures provide different contexts for the expression of these givens
they are nevertheless expressed. Babies, we have learned come into the world
possessing only what Jung might have called the collective unconscious. This
is not some mystical other. It is the genetic code, that shapes our form and
function based on the collected experience of all of our ancestors. Biology
is the first great storehouse of memory. It is nature's record of the
iterations and recursions of the past.

That memory we are born with interacts with the memory of our people, or our
culture as expressed by our parents, families and friends. Culture is formed
by the same interactions of the static and dynamic as shape species. But
rather that being preserved as genetic code it is preserved as patterns of
interaction. 

The intellectual level is even more ethereal and less tangible in that it is
patterns of individual thought encoded and preserved not static molecules or
static interactions but on pieces of paper or bits of code.

[DM]
Now as for levels, sure the inorganic must have a lower form of experience
than life, but how low, how far reduced. Sure lots but all the way down to
unconscious law abiding mechanisms? Who knows? Perhaps a good clue is that
when we learn habits they seem to occur less consciously. 
But this places things round the other way: perhaps electrons have to learn
to love proton and only after years of repetitive relationship does this
become an unconscious habit. But a reduced form of love of course, a love
for vibrations we might imagine and even great big complex human beings love
good vibrations too! Are electrical bonds a sort of endless little death
orgasm? And what are a billion interacting particles experiencing? I
imagine, and I am only looking for better metaphors and poetry than laws and
mechanisms (I mean are reductionists bondage freaks? -confess!), that
billions of interactions is a sort of pleasurable number crunching of lights
and vibrations, and would that not offer you more motivation to build a
cosmos than following the bloody laws of some boring creator-dictator? Or do
you enjoy submission? See different concept-metaphors=different values and
possibilities and sensibilities. It's all choice, its all built, Its all
contingent, but you can only build on what's already been laid down and you
can only built in your own little space-time segment.

[Krimel]
I think this kind of talk works well for explaining things to children or to
older people who are a bit slow. Maimonides and Leo Strauss had this idea
that the truth was just too much for the average Joe to swallow and so the
very wise among us construct myths to help the simple folk get along in the
world. The realist in me sees this as probably true but the Pollyanna
idealist within says people really aren't that dumb and that things really
aren't that complicated. My inner Pollyanna has suffered much abuse and yet
the bitch refuses to be quiet...