[MD] Social level for humans only

[david buchanan]

Andre said:
Mr. Pirsig suggested (from the MOQ point of view) that to extend notions of 'society' as pertaining to the organic, and perhaps even inorganic levels as seeming to 'destroy the meaning of the word 'society'.It weakens it and gains nothing'(Annot.5) A society of sheep? A society of cells? A society of grains of sand(a mountain or a beach)?



Magnus replied:
I think that comment was directed at me, but I fail to see why it destroys the meaning. And if it does, then the meaning wasn't that clearly stated in the first place. I mean, how *is* the social level defined in Lila anyway? I can only remember a couple of examples, but nothing like a formal definition.  ...Defining features? Those were just examples. Not a definition. What do they have in common? What separates them from biology? How are they dependent on biology? If you find crisp and clear answers to those, I'm all ears.


dmb says:


I'm with Andre, as usual. It destroys the meaning of "social" to extend it down into ant colonies and wolf packs because the defining feature of society is its opposition to the biological level. Pirsig points out that the distinctions between these levels are not very original and in this case the line between the social and the biological was pretty clearly drawn by Freud. Not that he invented it, but he gave it shape in our time such that most people think in Freudian terms whether they realize or not. So, anyway, take a look at this brief description from Wiki's article on Freud and read it with the biological-social distinction in mind. 

"In his later work, Freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: Id, ego, and super-ego. Freud discussed this model in the 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and fully elaborated upon it in The Ego and the Id (1923), in which he developed it as an alternative to his previous topographic schema (i.e., conscious, unconscious, and preconscious). The id is the impulsive, child-like portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and only takes into account what it wants and disregards all consequences.The term ego entered the English language in the late 18th century; Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) described the game of chess as a way to "...keep the mind fit and the ego in check". Freud acknowledged that his use of the term Id (das Es, "the It") derives from the writings of Georg Groddeck. The term Id appears in the earliest writing of Boris Sidis, in which it is attributed to William James, as early as 1898.The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche, which takes into account no special circumstances in which the morally right thing may not be right for a given situation. The rational ego attempts to exact a balance between the impractical hedonism of the id and the equally impractical moralism of the super-ego; it is the part of the psyche that is usually reflected most directly in a person's actions. When overburdened or threatened by its tasks, it may employ defense mechanisms including denial, repression, and displacement. The theory of ego defense mechanisms has received empirical validation,[43] and the nature of repression, in particular, became one of the more fiercely debated areas of psychology in the 1990s.[44]"


As I read it, the Id corresponds to the biological level and the super-ego corresponds to the social level. If that's true, it would sound right to say that biological values are child-like hedonism or impulsive pleasure seeking regardless of consequences. By contrast social level values are aimed at pushing back at exactly that. The impulsive desire for sex, violence, food is what makes the biological level work but social level moral codes are, more or less, an elaborate harness for these impulses. They're all about the regulation of who gets to bang who and who is allowed to use violence and who can eat what. The law of the jungle becomes something to be repressed, re-directed, re-channeled, and otherwise tamed. As Freud saw it, human culture was the attempt to make these impulses into something more refined and acceptable. Lust becomes romance. Violence becomes valor and heroism. Sublimation, he called it. We put scented candles and marble sinks in our bathrooms to make our animal functions less disgusting. Man is the animal who thinks his shit doesn't stink. But this is an improvement because it also means that Man is the animal who thinks rape and murder is wrong.


But I'm not pushing Freud here. In fact, I think his view is way too dark. Studies in evolutionary morality show that animals aren't quite as savage as the Victorian imagination had it and neither are we. Chimps, for example, know when they've been cheated and can return kindness. It's not too hard to see how our basic moral codes evolved quite naturally out that capability. But there is still a pretty clear distinction between their mating habits and our marriage laws. Well, except if you're in Vegas on a bender.