[MD] Quality Conversations

[Heather Perella]

> Matt:
> Yeah, that sounds about what I thought you and
> Pirsig (and certainly Heidegger) thought.  That
> might be the difference that everything else stems
> from--politics first v. spirit first.

SA:  Politics is a process that societies participate
amidst to coordinate social power.  Thus, bands,
chieftoms, and states are types of politics/political
systems.  It involves organization and the size of the
population has influenced if power is more centralized
or not.  Religion plays a role in carrying out the
politics/the social order.  So, the 'who's on first'
seems more an Abbot and Costello routine.  Haven't
read this whole post of yours Matt, and don't know if
dmb has responded back to you or not.  I noticed gav
posts in this thread too, so, maybe I'm saying
something you guys have already noticed and reoriented
in signify what meaning is trying to get across. 
Totem has something to do with too.  As totem's become
more impersonal this is also a sign that the
populations are getting larger and the politics needed
has to come up with more abstract ways to get the
message across to many, many different people within
the political system.  The power shifts from the
individual (bands) to chiefdoms (family based power)
to states (more centralized governments not family
based).  Thus, states are less biologically tied in
where the power influence is coming from.  Shades of
power are in these political systems, thus, individual
power is not restricted to bands, for the hero can act
in states too., but these larger political systems,
such as state, is trying to reach out beyond
particular individuals, beyond particular family
power, and includes a wider array of power that comes
from what has been understood as a more impersonal, I
would add, more nonfamily power, towards value focused
on the state at large and not any one family or
individual.  Sure families in states can become
powerful, but the state is more corporate in nature
and thus the state lives on even if the family may
have enjoyed power for some generations it is not
family that will continue the state, the state will
continue on its' own without matter of what
individuals and what families get involved in the
process that the state is.  
     

woods,
SA