[MD] Social level for humans only

[ADRIE KINTZIGER]

Fucking good article , Dave

2010/8/18 david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>

>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
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