LS Intellect (LONG)


Magnus Berg (MagnusB@DataVis.se)
Mon, 8 Sep 1997 12:11:09 +0100


Hi Lila squad!

A little diversion from the deep discussions about quantum
theories as Diana requested. BTW, thanks you for the EMM
transcription Diana, I had a great time reading it.
This is a little compilation of my thoughts over a week
or so, I tend to keep them for myself until I at least
can formulate questions out of them, I hope you don't mind.

I've been trying to figure out this so called intellect.
When I think about it, I always come up with two different
kinds. First, we have these static intellectual patterns
of value that is supposed to devour society and use it
for its own purposes. Then, we have the intellect that
enables us to walk, talk and function as human beings.

>From time to time, I simply wanted to split them apart and
call the first something else. The definitions, or rather,
the examples of its manifestations today have been like
Bodvar's "individual freedom". Don't get me wrong, I also
think that individual freedom is better than social tyranny.
It's just that in all the history of static quality, this
scenario have never appeared before. What's more important,
it does not conform to MoQ. The scenario is that patterns
of level A (humans) are used to form patterns of level A+1
(society), and when level A+2 (intellect) appears, level A
patterns suddenly pops up from nowhere and takes command.
It doesn't make sense!

The usual case would be that level A+2 would take control
over level A+1, still leaving level A at the mercy of level
A+1. AND level A will have no idea what's happening. It's
totally unaware of level A+1's manipulations, so is level A+1
about A+2's.

I realize that we don't have that many analogies to work
with here. 3 levels in a row in a 4-level hierarchy only makes
2 constellations. Second, analogies might not be the best
approach to the problem. After all, the levels are separated
for a reason, they're different! But it's the only approach I
can come up with.

Ok, let's drop down a level and see what happens. Set the
inorganic level as level A. Level A+1 (the organic) uses
level A to form organisms and level A has no clue, so far
so good. Then, a strange thing happens. To form a society
(level A+2) out of organic patterns, you can either take
whole organisms, i.e. sheep, to form a herd. Or, you choose
simple organic cells to form one sheep! So what level does
the sheep belong to?

It gets even more strange if you choose humans instead of
sheep, because the humans that forms society are fully
aware about the society they're supposed to have no clue
about!

I don't know if anyone else have had similar thoughts. It
usually starts with thinking about the intellectual level
and why you can't get a grip on what exactly it is. But you
can really start with (almost) any level and find the same
problem. Until recently I just fought the thought off thinking
that, surely I didn't grasp MoQ enough to understand it. But
with you guys on the other end I thought I might at least
formulate some questions, and as usual I try to answer them
myself, so here we go.

Maybe you're already guessing what I'm getting at, or maybe
it's been clear to you all along, and it just wasn't
sufficiently explained for me in Lila.

The answer is that the 'objects' we see around us can be
viewed and used as any level up to and including its highest
level. Sheep can be used as inorganic, organic or social
patterns of value, (assuming that sheep do not have
intellect), depending on what you're interested in. And a
human can be used as patterns of any level.

This would mean that any society, even a classic SOM
society, should have patterns of all levels up to and
including social, hmm... where are those organic ones?
You could argue that we are the organic patterns in a SOM
society. And in some early societies I guess we were the
only organic patterns, but not in a modern society. Today,
societies without school, fire department, police and so on
are considered to be very primitive ones. Just as early
collections of cells are considered to be very primitive
forms of life.

So, you argue that all parts of a SOM society needs people
to function, and I'd say: Yes, today, but not conceptually.
The only thing society needs is the function that the
different organs perform. It needs a fire department to
extinguish fires, it needs schools to train new 'members'
of society and so on. It does not need intelligent people!

Which brings me back to one of my previous posts about the
name of the organic level. I remember Bodvar commenting
that the name of the level was alright as it was, I didn't
quite get it at the time but now it's clear to me too.
Society doesn't care about what performs the function it
needs. Its only concern is to always have one handy when
needed. If a society needs a chair, it must have a chair-
maker in case the chair breaks. In that case, chairs would
be organic patterns of value, which should make us a little
more careful about what we say about the organic level,
i.e. not set it equal to what we call 'life' and so on.

A question for the think tank: If social patterns
uses the 'functions' of the organic level to build upon,
what does other levels use its lower level for? Is that
the difference between the levels?

I mean, imagine a society exploiting the 'function' of
single atoms, or even smaller particles. The smallest
society we recognize today is a cell right? Maybe we
should consider an atom to be a society too? Or maybe
I'm being confused by Bohr's atom modell, being
constructed like a society. We really like constructing
societies all around us doesn't we?

The next question is really about this. Why did humans
with intellect start building societies in the first
place? According to MoQ, that is immoral! And, according
to Pirsig, we are just now on our way to break loose of
these chains we constructed for ourselves thousands of
years ago. I must confess though, that considering the
life the people of the time led, forming a society
*was* quite moral! Why? I guess they had no choice.
It was either that or being back on the organic level
struggling for survival every day. Note though, that
our individual intellectual patterns are supported by
our individual social patterns called our bodies. Any
intellectual patterns supported by our SOM society have
not yet emerged! Or?

I think that we would be able to recognize it if it had
emerged. On the other hand, I wouldn't expect us to
recognize patterns of a higher level some of you have
mentioned. We're supposed to have no clue about higher
levels, static levels that is.

So, back to this elusive intellect of ours. I'd say that
the only intellectual patterns we see today is our own
individual ones. The reason we have societies is to make
survival easier. Unfortunately, we have had to run
society more or less by ourselves. But that time will
soon come to an end and we can let society run things
for us and intellectualize as much as we want, like we
are here on Lila squad! ;-)

        Magnus

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