[MD] Social level for humans only

[david buchanan]

Arlo said: 

Can you (in the plural) think of a way to define or categorize the social level that does NOT include the "human restriction" in the definition that would also set this restriction? Personally, I think a good place to start looking at the social-biological boundary is in the notion of "shared attention".


dmb says:

Let me expand on the analogy between the MOQ's levels and Freud's distinctions. To paraphrase Wiki's explanation, the Super-ego is that part of the personality structure, mainly but not entirely unconscious, that criticises and prohibits his or her drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions. The Super-ego can be thought of as a type of conscience that punishes misbehavior with feelings of guilt. Wiki's example of this naughty behavior, having extra-marital affairs, fits quite neatly with Pirsig's assertion that the social level has done a marvelous job putting restraints on biological quality. Where Wiki says, "the Super-ego works in contradiction to the id" and "strives to act in a socially appropriate manner", we can read it as saying that biological impulse "just wants instant self-gratification" but the social level gives us a "sense of right and wrong and guilt". The social level and the biological level are opposed to each other in the same sense as the super-ego, which "stands in opposition to the desires of the id because of their conflicting objectives". 

Not to complicate the matter, but "Freud's theory implies that the super-ego is a symbolic internalisation of the father figure and cultural regulations. ...The super-ego acts as the conscience, maintaining our sense of morality and proscription from taboos". He has some very interesting ideas about how this father figure was already forming in the lives of our pre-human ancestors. He speculates that one of the things that set us apart from the other apes was the ability and or willingness to subvert the natural order of things, which means the biggest, baddest ape was in charge, was "the father" of the tribe. Way back in the mists of time, the story goes, the younger apes banded together to overcome some big ape-king who'd committed some big ape-injustice against them - probably in a time of desperate want of food and such. So this gang of upstart chimps conducted a mutiny, killed the king-ape and ate him. He speculates that ritual cannibalism, such as we find in any christian church, comes from this original dirty deed. He thinks cannibalism and patricide were the first taboos, engendered the first feelings of ape-guilt, if you will.

Imagine that. Our central ritual has origins that almost pre-date the human species itself. It's right on that cusp, you know?

I'm not pushing Freud here. It's just this sort of language and analysis gives us a window into the ways in which human culture differs from the group formations we find among other animals. It gives us another, analogous way to think about the social level's relationship to the biological level - which is dependent and emergent and yet it is also oppositional. In that sense, the social level is defined as beyond biological and that more or less implies a human restriction.