From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Jan 23 2003 - 13:52:28 GMT
Steve, Wim:
> >> Steve: I can see how rocks, plants, animals, people, and ideas fall
> >> neatly into the categories but what about crime, democracy, terrorism,
> >> communism, capitalism, dancing monkeys and others that have been debated
> >> by this group that seem much less obvious to me.
> >
> >Platt: Call me simplistic. Crime-biological. Democracy-social. Terrorism-
> > biological. Communism-social. Capitalism-social. Dancing monkeys-
> > biological. (I'd like to see some corroboration for that monkey story.)
> >
>
> Steve:
> What I'm interested in is how you make such categorizations. How do we know
> that crime, for example, is biological? I know Pirsig said it is, but I
> don't why. I want to be able to categorize for my self.
I accept Pirsig's hierarchy of levels consisting of static moral patterns which
I think of as "laws"-- inorganic the laws of physics, biological the laws of the
jungle, social the laws of man, intellectual the laws of logic and mathematics.
While each lower level supports the higher, each seeks domination over
others. The laws of man by which a society maintains its viability are
threatened by the might-makes-right laws of the jungle, practiced by
both criminal individuals and nations.
> I questioned Wim on this point. In case you are interested...
>
> [Steve] wrote 26/11 12:39 -0500:
> 'Do you stand by the definitions that you gave for how patterns are
> latched? The last one about intellectual patterns being latched "in a way
> that is acceptable to others" has a social ring to it. Would it make sense
> to say that intellectual patterns are latched as mental structures of the
> kind that one is conscious of ie concepts?
>
> Wim responded:
> "Yes, I stand by my description of the way the intellectual level is
> latched:
> 'conscious motivation/justification of actions in a way that is acceptable
> to others'. I consciously gave it BOTH a social ring AND an individual ring
> (by refering to individual actions). In my view the distinction between
> social and individual in the MoQ is not related to a distinction between
> phenomena that can or can't be interpreted as 'collective'. Both social and
> intellectual patterns of values combine an 'individual' (in the SOM sense)
> aspect ('habit' and 'idea'/'symbolic representation') and a collective
> aspect (sharing/copying/passing on habits/ideas/symbolic representations).
>
> Intellectual patterns need for their 'latching' more individuals and
> communication between them. An 'idea' or 'concept' that is not applied in
> communication loses its meaning and effectively dies (even if it can be
> conserved and 'sleep' for quite a long time by committing it to paper or
> other media)."
Since ideas are constantly being latched and unlatched in my head (I
presume in other heads, too) and are never expressed other than in my
own private conversations with myself, I see no reason to demand a
"communication" requirement for the intellectual level. In fact, when you
think about all that's going on in the world, 90 percent of it is "hidden"
within the confines of each individual's brain. Human life is like an
iceberg. Only a small portion of ideas people have are ever
communicated to others. The ideas that change the world (Einstein,
Gates, Pirsig) are first firmly latched in an individual mind before
becoming communicated and collectively accepted.
Platt
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