HAS KEITH NOTHING CONSTRUCTIVE TO SAY?
In my last post I tried to think about how we might recognize the fifth level by inquiring into the criteria for a new level. However, I didn't offer any positive idea of what might constitute a 5th level, since I failed to perceive any candidates.
This time, I don't have much constructive to say, but I wanted to respond to a few posts to offer my critique, which I do below. I also wanted to thank Bo for his response to my Shrubbery post and tell Tor I thought his observations on the definitions of
the levels were right-on.
Todd offered the view that emotion will constitute the 5th level:
> > Behind door # 3.14… L5 candidate, loosely titled: The Emotional
> > Level.
>
> > The emotional level should not be confused with an emotional
>state.
> > The latter being submersed in a one sided view or value pattern.
>The
> > emotional level (L5) will conversely be able to clearly see and
>feel
> > the VALUE OF OPPOSITION. Internal descriptions of opposition
>include
> > such things as: Love-Hate, Sadness-Joy, Contempt-
>Compassion,
> > Anger-Mercy, Attraction-Repulsion etc. etc. External
>descriptions of
> > opposition include such things as: Branch-Root, Ceiling-Floor,
> > Artery-vein, Top-Bottom, Expansion-Contraction etc. etc. And of
> > course in my very description, we have the opposition of
> > internal-external. And in the course of our focus group
>discussions
> > we frequently touch on the higher forces or......
Bodvar warmed to the idea, renaming it the value of opposition:
>"Emotional level" !? At first I did not buy it, emotions are to me THE
>social expression par excellance. What would co-existence be
>without love and hate and all other "signals" of what is desireable
>and what is tabu. But then you said that an emotional state should
>not be confused with your EMOTIONAL LEVEL, and as you
>developed your idea it became warmer. "Value of opposition"
On the face of it, I must object to the identification of emotion as the 5th level. Bo calls it social expression, but I would place emotion even further below intellect--as primarily in the biological domain of evolution, as an advanced organism's method
of perceiving quality. By this demotion, I don't mean to denigrate emotion--I believe that emotional integration is critical for our health, both individually and culturally, but to place emotion above intellect is a grave mistake. Hatred and fear make
poor leaders, and even love and compassion do not invent the wheel or harness electricity.
But in this approach, I've probably confused Todd's emotional level with an emotional state, as he specifically warned me not to do. When I examine the content of this suggestion, I see that he's really talking about the acceptance/valuing of oppositions,
not about emotions per se. I do see good in this approach, which seems in influence to be rather Taoist. To his list of oppositions to be transcended, I might add Yin-Yang, and our own favorite, static-Dynamic. HisWhether it constitutes a whole new level,
though, I remain unconvinced. I don't see it as constraining intellect, which I believe must be a key criterion for the 5th level, as I argued in my previous post. It appears to me to be an important expansion of intellect, by not forcing consilience where
none exists, but not a wholly different level.
On a different tack, Jon offered a New Age view of the 5th level, which which I'm afraid I must vehemently disagree.
At 4:32 AM -0400 10/16/1999, Cntryforce@aol.com wrote:
>I believe the fifth level will be some kind of expansion of consciousness. I
>can't be more specific than that, but I believe some people have already
>tapped into it.
>
>Intellect as we know it today is just a small fragment, IMO, of the hidden
>capacity of consciousness.
See Bo's admonishments on the SOM "mind", which I believe are apropos here.
>Just as Biological creatures depend on Inorganic materials to survive, so
>does Society. The economy. Money. Gold, silver, paper, whatever. The point
>is, money is utterly Inorganic. Our Intellect created the false idea that
>this Inorganic material we call money is valuable. Money is the blood of
>Society. Society bleeds to death without it.
>
>Maggie discussed leadership. Whether it's by an individual, a group, or an
>idea, they can all be harmful. The very idea that we should attach such great
>value to Inorganic pieces of paper (or even gold) is barbaric. It hinders the
>growth of the human spirit.
This bit caught my interest. I don't believe that money, be it gold, silver, paper can be properly placed in the Inorganic level. First, let me grant that gold, for example, is certainly *composed of* inorganic material. (Paper, arguably, is composed of
biological material, coming from trees and all.) However, that does not make money a member of the Inorganic or Biologic domain any more than the facts that my message is displayed as a pattern of glowing phosphors or stored as electromagnetic domains on
an iron-oxide disk makes it an Inorganic pattern. This message is at least a social pattern and hopefully an Intellectual one. Money, properly understood, is primarily a *social pattern of value*. It is an expression of trust among members of society, a
way to mediate roles and relationships between individuals.
If that were not the case, then we would never have progressed from the gold standard to paper to electrons. It is the socially agreed-upon *pattern* that is significant, not the underlying substrate. Gold or little pieces of green paper are not
"intrinsically" valuable (in the monetary sense of value) as gold or green paper, but only insofar as the good faith of people makes them so. But that in itself is a significant and real value--a perfectly valid and incredibly useful *social* value. Money
is a way for society to manage the creation and transfer of other forms of value among individuals.
That said, it's hard to argue that the point that the system in some ways "hinders the growth of the human spirit". Examples abound. However, I would much rather be in a society with a working economy than in a dirt poor country or fending for myself. It
seems to me that living cold and hungry, constantly scrounging for food and shelter does a lot more to hinder the growth of the human spirit than does seeing money as having intrinsic (rather than more properly, instrumental) value. See Maslow and his
hierarchy of needs on this point.
>Having said that, I believe the fifth level is to be found in the category
>commonly referred to as "New Age." As other posters have pointed out,
>meditation, trances, and astral projection are all gaining popularity and new
>consideration. We need to keep an open mind above all else.
I'll admit to having a knee-jerk reaction to this suggestion. I'll try to keep an open mind (as in one that, like a parachute, only functions when open), but I fear that letting in New Age beliefs unquestioningly will leave my mind so far open as to have
my brains fall out. If you can advance an argument as to why 'astral projection' should be considered a new level, I'll listen, but I see no prima facie reason that should be the case.
Meditation, on the other hand, as a method to quiet the chattering mind (exerting control?), might be something to look into, but it's an ancient practice that carries with it no necessary metaphysical baggage about the existence of other planes of
existence that one's 'consciousness' might travel through.
Well that's enough criticism for one day. I hope those to whom I responded take my words as they were intended--in the spirit of open dialogue.
MAYBE, BUT ONLY META-CONSIDERATIONS, METHINKS
So that I'm not entirely negative in my contribution, I will offer a brief extension of my previous post on this topic, where I argued for the acceptance of constraint as a criterion for the identification of ethico-evolutionary levels.
To control/constraint of the lower level, I would add:
Independence from governing laws of lower level.
Pirsig also makes this explicit in Chapter 12, in his extensive discussion of computer circuits and novels and of the platypus of humankind:
"Matter is just a name for certain inorganic value patterns. Biological patterns, social patterns, and intellectual patterns are supported by this pattern of matter but are independent of it. They have rules and laws of their own that are not derivable
from the rules or laws of substance."
Each new level operates on different principles and requires a different level of description to capture its operation. The behavior of a spider cannot be reduced to or derived from the chemical laws which govern its metabolism or the physical laws which
govern its material composition or the quantum principles which ultimately describe its subatomic constitution.
If this is another correct criterion for level-identification, then any 5th level must not only control intellect but have a description and governing rules which are different from and independent of those of intellect. I would conjecture that they would
be different in some fairly radical way, as distinct from intellect as life is from dead rocks and as society is from the jungle. I still don't know what that might look like.
Furthermore, if we were to consistently apply these two criteria to the history of evolution, I think we'd find more than our beloved 4 levels. I don't mean to turn into Doug Renselle (I find much of his work impenetrable) but I do think that the quantum
realm probably qualifies as its own level by these two criteria, as Doug shows in his speculative extensions graphic at <http://www.quantonics.com/MoQ.html>. [Aside: His "ascendent patterns" as a candidate for level 5 is too vague to comment on, but is a
nice name.]
As I indicated in my last post, I think we might also split BIOLOGICAL - SOCIAL INTELLECTUAL into BIOLOGICAL - SOCIAL - MENTAL - CULTURAL - INTELLECTUAL if we were to rigorously apply these criteria. I don't know that these extra levels are useful in
answering moral questions, but I think they may be justified on the basis of control and independence.
The trouble I find in pursuing an extension of this classification scheme is that the world does not fit into a neat hierarchy very easily. We've struggled with the SOCIAL - INTELLECTUAL split for a long time and gone around and around. Perhaps making a
few more level delineations to sharpen the distinctions would help in our understanding, but ultimately I think we'd arrive at some of the same conundrums. One of the shortcomings of Pirsig's system is that it ignores horizontal relationships and focuses
exclusively on these emergent vertical hierarchies. But this is surely an idealized situation. Much of biology and society acts as a network and sometimes the network linkages extend across levels. For example, the biosphere is continually taking in
inorganic material from the environment and using it and then returning it, forming a complex web of inorganic-biological relationships and climate-regulating feedbacks. Those familiar with the Gaia hypothesis will no doubt concur!
t!
hat the living:non-living boundary becomes somewhat meaningless when looking at the complete system of interactions. I think something similar can be said of the society-intellect division. Feedback loops exist here which make extricating and isolating the
two sometimes difficult and arbitrary.
What a pessimistic way to end my post. Well, I seem to be more muddled than when I started, so I think I'll quit before I lose it completely! Perhaps someone else can help me return to clarity?
Best to all,
Keith
______________________________________________________________________
Keith A. Gillette <http://www.iglobal.net/pub/gillette/>
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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