[MD] Step two

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[Jan Anders]
I don’t think social patterns must consist of humans. Most animals and herbs are using sexual strategies to breed.

[Arlo]
Sexual strategies are biological, not social, so I am not sure how these two thoughts follow each other.

And, no, like you I do not think the social level is exclusively human. I do think, however, that non-human social patterns are found near the biological/social border, and are primitive or proto- as compared to evolved and complex social patterns we see in human activity. Saying this, I realize, will disturb both the 'purists' who (admittedly, along with Pirsig) mark the bio/socio divide with exclusively human activity, and the animists who will interpret my remarks as unfairly anthropomorphically biased (which perhaps they are). However, as my 'springboard' is the neural-mass-enabled 'shared intentionality', certainly we see (in primates or animals with sufficiently complex neural structures) some rudimentary forms of social activity. As I've said, this is to be distinguished from the bio-chemical/pheromone structured behavior of ants and bees, for example. In any event, once we traverse the border and start to move up the social-evolutionary spectrum towards highly complex social patterns, we do start to see more exclusively human activity. 

[Jan Anders]
It now appears to me that this "Celebrity is to social patterns as sex is to biological patterns.” must be a formal flaw in Lila. RMP was right when he said the Victorian social pattern were supressing sex as sex was a representative for the lower organic level. Sexual activities and erotic patterns were banned because it led to undesireable organic reproduction.. 

[Arlo]
Again, not following your reasoning here. Sex is (one way) biological patterns reproduce, or sex is the way most advanced biological patterns reproduce. I don't see how the Victorian repression of sexual activity would deny that 'celebrity' is (one way) social patterns reproduce. This was given, by Pirsig, as an example of a higher order pattern exerting control over a lower level pattern; i.e., social patterns dominating biological patterns.

[Jan Anders]
Sexually social patterns appear now to belong to the social level as they are acts of shared intention and attention, depending upon and using organic patterns for their own benefit and purpose, increasing the rate of mutations per generation into a superior number in an exponential figure. 

[Arlo]
Ah, I think you are confusing human sexual rituals with sexual reproduction. 

No, the act of sexual reproduction does not require shared attention. Go to a farm and watch the cows. But, certainly, as social beings, we enact a lot of social ritual around sexual behavior. Certainly "sexual selection" has become a social activity. Determining consent, boundaries, expectations, precautions, all of these are social rituals humans partake in on top of the biological act of sex.