Hello Wim and all:
The distinction you make between static patterns and static latches doesn't
make any sense to me. I mean, its true that each level has its own kind of
creation and destruction, its own kind of living and dying, but I don't
think that's what Pirsig means by "static latching". I think everything
comes and goes because permanence, eternal existence, does not serve the
evolutionary process.
In any case, do you know of any statements of Pirsig's that would back up
the idea that static latching is about replication? Do you have any quotes
to reference in support?
The type of static latch of the 2nd (biological) level is DNA
replication. Biological patterns of values have at their core the
replication of (nearly) identical DNA strings which lead to
comparable -instinctive or
circumstance-and-genetic-ability-dictated- behavior.
Social patterns of value have at their core replication of
cultural habits, 'ways in which one ought to do things' that are
emulated because of the status attached to them in a social
hierarchy.
The 4th level started to grow from the 3rd level when humans
started to motivate their behavior. Motives form patterns that
are separate from the patterns of the behavior they are supposed
to explain. Where the social level only required a dim
consciousness of individuality (a unique individual position in a
status hierarchy), the intellectual level requires consciousness
of a pattern of behavior of a particular body (of a 'person') AND
of a responsible 'I'.
Motivating behavior requires language, but language doesn't imply
intellectual patterns of values. In my opinion the social level
does NOT require language yet. The first humans that created
social patterns of values did not have or need substantially more
language skills than anthropoid apes. They only needed a little
bit more 'sense of individuality' to create the 3rd level.
Behavior is motivated because people want (or are socially
required) to be 'true' to themselves, to make their pattern of
behavior consistent. By motivating their behavior, and copying
ways of doing that from others, they create systems of ideas,
supposedly referring to 'truth'. These systems of ideas in turn
help them to make their pattern of behavior more consistent: by
modeling their motives and -to the extent that it is consciously
produced- their behavior after a system of ideas.
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