MF,
MARCO IS GOING TO SUGGEST A POSSIBLE LINK BETWEEN BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL
PATTERNS
----------------------
What makes a city, a culture, a society, a civilization alive?
What makes a city, a culture, a society, a civilization dead?
-----------------------
One week ago I was in Rimini. It's a city not far from my home, very
ancient, on the Adriatic coast. Founded as Greek colony more than 2500 years
ago with the name of Ariminon. When Romans came, they built a big road from
Rome to Rimini (via Flaminia) and another one from Rimini to northern plains
(via Aemilia). Today the via Aemilia is still the most trafficked road of
this area.
And also they built a famous triumph arch (Arch of Augustus), and a famous
stone bridge (Bridge of Tiberius). One week ago I walked upon that bridge.
It was a warm spring night, I was observing the inscriptions carved in the
stone and wondering about the people that 2000 years before me where walking
on the same stones, among horses and carts. I imagined them wearing strange
clothes and talking about the weather in a strange language. Similar to
mine, as Italian derives in great part from Latin, but probably not
understandable by me if talked as mother tongue.
Today carts are not towed by horses. But a lot of people talking strange
languages visit every day the Bridge of Tiberius. Germans, French, Russians.
Tourists.
----------------
As European and Italian, I can well find marks of past cultures today
extinguished. Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, Celts, Villanovians are (in
inverse time order) different civilizations that inhabited my region.
All died. Yes, they left a lot of marks, but that Roman bridge is for us a
monument. For them it was both a way for business and a sign of the
supremacy of Roman civilization on nature. It had for them the same
value we give today to the Space Shuttle.
Andrew:
> Eradicate the human from the city and the city loses consciousness
> and dies. This is evident in Aztec and Mayan culture. A beautiful,
> inspirational and somewhat daunting civilization that existed for a couple
> of thousand years. When the people disappeared so did their consciousness.
I'm not in total agreement. For example, the death of Roman culture was not
caused by a sudden disappearance of people. Nor, as someone believes, by the
invasion of "Barbarians": this was one of the numerous strokes . Simply, the
original values that preconditioned the birth of that culture were
disappeared. Christian religion substituted the ancient Gods. The
ecclesiastic organization took the place of a decadent empire. Nobles
decided it was "better" to live in castles, with a private army, and private
servitude, rather than in cities. Poor people felt to be more protected by
the lord of the manor, rather than the empire structures. That slow
process was the birth of the Middle Ages, and the death of Roman Empire.
I agree with the subsequent part of Andrew's post:
> This is what makes the cities alive. These shared values and
> ideas are part of the culture of a city. They are set up and maintained by
> systems and processes that produce goods and services which ultimately
shape
> the environment. This shaped environment is the city.
Yes, cultures are made of shared (social) values. Effectively at every level
we can find structured patterns: planets, jungles, cultures, philosophies...
what we call "giant" is a structured aggregation of simpler static patterns,
sharing social values. The development of a culture is a very slow process.
During it, the original (biologic) constituent values faded away, and were
substituted by the new level values.
We discussed a lot of the "machine codes" being the basis of levels. Pirsig
used this concept to explain DNA as the inorganic machine code for
biological patterns. We came to a possible agreement on language as the
social machine code for intellectual patterns.
There's still a missing link: the machine code for social patterns. In the
past someone suggested "behavior", but I think it's too generic: we can talk
about behavior at all levels, for all patterns. Behavior seems to be a
consequence of the environment conditions, within boundaries encoded in the
"machine code".
"The Machine Language Instruction Repertoire fascinated Phaedrus because he
had seen it from such different perspectives. He had written hardware
descriptions of many hundreds of blueprints showing how voltage levels were
transferred from one bank of flip-flops to another to create a single
machine language instruction. These Machine Language instructions were the
final achievement toward all the circuits aimed. They were the end
performance of a whole symphony of switching operations.
Then when he got into programming he found that this symphony of electronic
circuits was considered to be a mere single note in a whole other symphony
that had no resemblance to the first one. [...] The Machine Language
Instruction Repertoire, which had been the entire design goal, was now the
lowest element of the lowest level programming language. Most programmers
never used these instructions directly or even knew what they meant" (Lila,
Chap. 12)
The main characteristic of a "machine code" seems to be something that is
the "entire design goal" for the below level. So if we want to find the
"machine code" for social patterns, we must search a set of biological
characteristic, very refined, that helped people to unify their existences
to create a very simple structured social pattern. A set of characteristics
that has been then surpassed, while remaining as substratum in social
activities.
Pursuing backward the social path (Empires, nations, poleis, tribes,
families...), I think we can get near the original constituent values.
Let's imagine for a moment single animals everyday fighting for survival.
What biological input drive them? Hunger, thirst, cold, sexual attraction..
in one word, instincts. These instincts, driven by experience, are common to
all biological individuals.
Humans have a superior set of instincts, AKA emotions.
Love, hate, shame, joy, sadness, pride, solidarity... are biological and
instinctual, but also are usually expressed in social situations. Couldn't
it be that emotions were created in human beings as the most refined set of
instincts to be the "entire design goal" of biological existence? And that
these emotions pushed humans to live in families (love), to play games
(joy), to hunt in group (solidarity), to defend the family (pride), to
respect the customs of the tribe (shame) ?
Seen from a biological point of view, emotions are seemingly a great refined
reason to live, more dynamic than mere instincts. Seen from a social point
of view, emotions often become something that must be hidden, while
remaining the substratum of our social behavior.
Then arrived language (mimic, graphic, written...) to communicate (from
Latin word "communis" = common) emotions, social purposes, memories, ideas
.... but this is another story.
--------------------------
At the end of this post, I want also to express some thoughts about these
"codes". IMO every code is, for a pattern, both the first brick, and the
constitutional limit. My DNA encoded all my possibilities to be a human
being with all my characteristics, and also encoded all my limits. If I
can't fly, or
live 1000 years, or see X-Rays, it's because my DNA doesn't allow these
possibilities.
If emotions are the social code, it's easy to understand that the limit for
social patterns if that their behavior is subjected to emotional inputs: the
Giant must provide to satisfy the collective emotions of members, no matter
how to come to this goal. Intellectual patterns were firstly created (using
language as code) just to control and lead these massive emotions.
And if language is the intellectual code, it's also its limit. Language (in
every possible forms), used to communicate (even to ourselves), is the
inherent characteristic of all intellectual patterns. As long as we use
language we can't go out from 4th level. That's why we are "suspended in
language". Just like my biological self is "suspended in DNA", and my social
self is
"suspended in emotions".
Any thoughts?
---------------------------
tks for your attention.
Marco.
--------------------------
p.s.
I just read Bo's and David B.'s posts.
Just a comment:
Bo, I think our respective parts are well delineated now. I thank you for
all your good words. Maybe we are more close than we believe. After all, the
main difference seems to be a "taxonomic" discussion if SOM constitutes a
level itself (SOLAQI), or not. David B. seems to have reached my same
position, where MOQ "contains" SOM (confront my 16 may post "evolved pattern
contains its parent"). I think you "created" SOLAQI just to express your
strong will to be free from the SOM Giant. That's a great purpose, and you
helped us to be "aware" of the dangers of SOM. I ask you just this simple
question: Don't you think that Intellect (seen just as a linguistic
construction) can be free from Subject Object Logic? If yes, SOLAQI falls.
If not, SOLAQI, as linguistic construction, is within SOL.
Your idea of a new "machine code" could be an escape. But the 5th level
machine
code must be a very refined set of intellectual characteristics, able IMO to
surpass the limits of language. Intellectual patterns need too much time to
arrive there. They will, without words.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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