[MD] Problems with Intellectual control of Society

[Ian Glendinning]

John, Arlo,

Arlo summarized ...
> Biological dominance of inorganic patterns = good.
> Social dominance of biological patterns = good.
> Intellectual dominance of social patterns = bad?

This interminable difficulty agreeing whether the social /
intellectual relationship has any fixed hierarchical relation, is
where I suggest we treat them as one layer
cultural-social-intellectual (defined by semantic / symbolic /
linguistic communication) and look at two other axes as potential ways
to divide them ....  The individual vs collective, and the free vs
authority ideas .... Which invariably crawl out of the woodwork when
we debate examples - either that or we simply accept that social and
intellectual are not actually very well defined, don't even try to
objectify them any more, and do the pragmatic thing as John suggests.

Either way there are very FEW patterns that are entirely social, and
NONE that are entirely intellectual in the real human world (IMHO
natch).

Incidentally it's one reason I still find it worth engaging wih Bo on
what intellect really is (now and in future) - we agree historically.
Regards
Ian