[MD] Step two

[Jan Anders Andersson]

Good morning Dave and all


23 aug 2014 x kl. 23:55 david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 
> "There are no chains more vicious than the chains of biological necessity into
> which every child is born. Society exists primarily to free people from these
> biological chains."
> 
> 
> "cannibalism, not cooperation, was a pre-society norm … American 
> Indians … ambushed & tortured [other tribes] … maybe it is man’s 
> basic goodness which invented social institutions to repress this kind 
> of biological savagery in the first place."
> 
> 
> "We must understand that when a society undermines 
> intellectual freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, 
> but when it represses biological freedom for its own purposes it is 
> absolutely morally good. These moral bads and goods are not just 
> ‘customs’. They are as real as rocks and trees."
> 
> 
> Traditional religion fits neatly into this picture. Church morality, if you will, is almost entirely about controlling our biological appetites. "Society exists primarily to free people from these biological chains" and religion certainly played a role in this but the allure of fame and fortune also plays a major role. 
> 
> 
> "Celebrity is the Dynamic Quality that primitive social patterns once 
> used to organize themselves … an organizing force of the whole social 
> level of evolution. Without this … advanced complex human societies 
> might be impossible."
> 
> 
> 
> "… When you look back into the very first writing in the history of 
> the western world … Babylon … they’re about celebrity: I, Hammurabi am 
> the big wheel here. I have this many horses … concubines … slaves … oxen
> … I am one of the greatest … kings there ever was … The Pyramids were 
> celebrity devices. All the statues … palaces … robes … jewels of social 
> authority: those are just celebrity devices. The feathers of the Indian 
> headdress. Children being told they would be struck blind if they ever 
> accidentally looked at the emperor. All the Sirs & Lords & 
> Reverends & Doctors of European address … badges & trophies … 
> promotions up the business ladder … election to ‘high office … feuding 
> and battling for prestige among academics and scientists … Celebrity.    Even a policeman’s uniform is a kind of celebrity … without celebrity
> nobody would take orders from anybody and there would be no way you 
> could get the society to work … High school was really the place for 
> celebrity … jocks out playing football … pom-pom girls … You can measure
> the quality of a university by comparing the relative strengths of the 
> celebrity patterns and the intellectual patterns. You never got rid of 
> the celebrities, even at the best universities, but there the 
> intellectuals could ignore them and be in a class by themselves.  … the Metaphysics of Quality says that movement upward from the 
> social mirrors of celebrity is a moral movement from a lower form of 
> evolution to a higher one. People should go that way if they can."
> 
> 
> These are not new ideas, really. Plato construed things this way in a kind of hierarchy of love. Those who love physical pleasure were the lowest, he thought, while those who seek fame and fortune were higher than the hedonists they still weren't as lofty as those who loved truth and wisdom, namely philosophers like himself. It's a wide-spread and well-known way of thinking about our situation. Pirsig is giving us his own version but the basic categories really shouldn't be contentious or confusing.
> 
> Sorry, but all these weird questions and bizarre suggestions about defining levels, adding levels, putting levels between levels, it's all just a bunch of boring nonsense that never, ever goes anywhere. Yawn. Please wake me when it's over.
> 
It’s not over yet. The MOQ, with the knowledge of the 4 levels, is the tool that, correctly understood and mastered, can be applied on several misconceptions like antiintellectualism, neoliberal economic theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism), antiabortion lobbies (http://www.essaysforstudent.com/Social-Issues/Ant-Abortion/46280.html), objectivists, among others. Most of the time it is quite smart people using the wrong approach upon important issues because they don’t see or care about the difference between the color of the skin, cultural heritage or the free political choice. No one can be sentenced by the court for just being pale or dark, raised in Centerville but for his conscious criminal decisions.

That is why I think it is important to try to find an easy, clear definition of the treshold between the levels, to avoid confusion. It’s not only about the higher level supressing the lower. We have to deal with issues at all levels with the right means.

Step one, from inorganic into organic is found in self-reproduction, simple RNA or DNA bearer.

Step two, from organic into social is somewhere where the cooperation of a group of different type gain and keep an advantage before singleminded creatures. Meiosis is superior to mitosis. Not only for celebrity of a few but for a better life for all of its members.

It’s earlier said to have to do with shared intention or shared attention, but I’d say today that at the social level it is just shared, something shared in common that is worth more than acting alone.
This link "Gaze Following and Joint Visual Attention in Nonhuman Animals" (Itakura, Kyoto University, http://www.psy.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/COE21/report/H15/9D-2.pdf) from Arlo shows that attention (the gazing point or direction) is based on a common concept, and concepts belong to the intellectual level. Intention is also a concept. The use of common concepts, like numbers and scientific formulas, comes with step three and we aren’t there yet. Uncommon concepts which aren’t proved to be true independent of what society or social pattern using it belong to the social level, because truth is then subordinated to the social purpose.

Jan-Anders


> 		 	   		  
> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org/md/archives.html