Marco
As told I became quite absorbed in your Oct.7 essay. This is MOQ
understood to a great depth.You wrote:
> Pirsig doesn't draw perfect lines to classify patterns in levels.
> Every division risks to be arbitrary. For example: it's usual to
> think that bees nests are social patterns. I'm not sure: bees
>build nests under a necessary force filed in their DNA. They are
>not able to live alone in a jungle. They don't choose to live in a
>nest. So their "social" behavior can be seen as a pure Bio
>Pattern.
If you had searched the archives you would probably have found
the dispute with Donald Palmgren over bee-hives and such, wherein
I think I wielded a view similar to yours of this being a bio-socio
fringe behaviour. One note of caution though: I have qualms about
using the DNA (genes) argument out of the Biological context lest
you end up in SOM's "nature or nurture" dilemma where
EVERYTHING is either genetically or culturally determined: An
impossible choice that the MOQ puts an end to.
> .... take a newborn baby from a cave, and bring him to Los
>Angeles, you will make of him a perfect 3rd millennium American
>boy. He has (had!) in his DNA all our functions.
Right. Or a newborn baby from Los Angeles brought into a
caveman society or a wolf lard becomes one of them. Hi Magnus,
remember our wolf-boy dispute?
> Surely in this moment Bo is searching a way to put his Q-idea
>in my words! Let's try... SOM has been the main intellectual
>pattern during the social level age; it has been decisive to help
>western culture to develop technology, science, culture..... Now
>it's no more adequate... SOM has never been able to give
>happiness (that is a perception of Good) to men. So a new
>Intellectual pattern, the Q-Idea, is coming. (what do you think
>Bo?) IMHO this Q-Idea is in this moment "only" another
>philosophy, a better one, and maybe one day will be able to
>create something new, who knows? Just like in bio - patterns
>evolved a new strange animal, the Man. He was able to do
>strange things.... and created a new world.
Yes, I tried to adjust it to my SOLAQI that says that SOM is the Q-
Intellect, but alas....! One moment you write in the vein of SOLAQI
the next you lapse back into the view of Intellect as the "thinking"
realm where various metaphysics vie for dominance. However, if
you merely see Intellect - up to now - as a semi-social, and what is
happening now is its real "coming of age" (not any stirring of a new
level). Well, this is a blow to my pet idea and something I'll have to
contemplate (but see below).
> 8) It's also the time to fight horizontally against SOM.
About the agora and the Net is OK, but I have one reservation re.
"horizontality". Archimedes asked for a fixed point and he would
move the earth which means that one needs leverage OUTSIDE of
the "object" one is to move. Is it possible to find such a fixed point
INSIDE the intellectual level where the MOQ can be (re)move
SOM? I have rejected the image of Intellect as a realm where
something as enormous as the MOQ can coexist with something
as enormous as SOM, and have proposed Intellect as SO-
thinking itself and the Q idea as an external movement. Can you
persuade me to think otherwise. Please do.
KEN
Good to see an input from you in this forum too, but over to
budiness. I find it a little strange that you use entropy (falling
energy levels, "local" admittedly) as the tool while opposing its
second law (universal heat-death). I do however agree and refer to
Pirsig's sentence about evolution pointing its nose at entropy.
Seamless evolution? Seen one way it looks so. I have always
maintained the view that there are zones of indeterminacy between
the Q-levels where for instance dead and living is impossible to tell
apart. But seen another way the levels are discrete. It is as if
evolution (DQ) says exactly that: "Enough of this static inorganic
prison"! Life was not its goal, but the surprising "product" once the
inorganic walls were scaled.
> It seems to me that the same processes that we can glimpse in
>the universe at large hold true for life on the planet Earth. Looking
> back over the story of the evolution the Earth and the life on it it
> seems to me that the process of entropy is going on not only
>with the inorganic Earth but also with the burden of the life it is
> carrying. As Quality drives life, and particularly humanity, toward
> greater intellect we can see that there is a race going on
>between greater human intellect and the wisdom and
>understanding that we are capable of applying to the overall
>functioning of the biosphere, including us. We have noticeably
>disrupted the gaseous envelope of the Earth. I have heard on
>NPR lately that a significant portion of the greenhouse gases are
>produced by power plants. Hard to curtail those quickly without a
>lot of social disruption. We have become so numerous that we
>are forced to use cancer inducing chemicals to produce enough
>food. New viruses are appearing on Earth possibly
> because of overpopulation. In the US we are advised to get our
>flu shots two weeks early because of influenza imported from
>Alaska on cruise ships. El Nino is particularly active because we
>are raising the temperature of the Earth. A large part of North
>Carolina has been under water for some weeks. A large
>atmospheric hole lies over a large part of Antarctica. I can't
>account for the spate of earthquakes that have occurred this year.
>I also don't know how many small wars are going on right now,
>but there are a bunch. I hate to be so pessimistic but it seems to
>me that the fifth level could possibly turn out to be self
>destruction. I don't think that we can completely destroy
>ourselves, just drastically reduce our numbers.
A sobering view, but look Ken: Biology's value is to fill every nook
and devour all available nourishment of whatever environment, at
the bacteria strata we see it in its pure form, but it pervades LIFE
at all degrees of evolution. But this is what Social value is there to
control. In the "zone of indeterminacy" between Biology and
Society a wolf pack (for instance) will distribute food (store even)
so that most members will grow up, yet still - as society -
reproduce until famine.
Higher up the social scale the horizon expands until the human
where one Ken Clark is so socially "conscious" that he sees the
GLOBAL view. And yet, even if there is to be a global society - a
universal even - it will still be SOCIAL VALUE whose eternal
purpose
is to see that no single entity - be it an organism a community, a
country even - gets too much at the cost of the other!
>From what you say it sounds as if you want "Intellect" to be the
reason
that both makes us humans able to both expand biologically unto
destruction (principally there is no difference between a yeast
colony and a particular species) and SEE the consequences.But
(as you know :-) I claim that this is not Q-Intellect. According to
the MOQ each level's value is to control/constraint the level below
and consequently Intellect may in fact be the blockage to the
social distribution of wealth.
This means that a pure social society (!) would allot resources to
each "... according to need and demanded according to ability (if
my communist manifest is correct), but in our real societies it
clashes with Q-intellect's value of individual freedom. But your
closing words are prophetical:
> That may be the only way that we can get to a fifth level, that is
> by rubbing our noses in our stupidity until we are forced to
>become wise.
Exactly. A "new level" will check Intellect, if not in the "rubbing
our noses" sense, but making us see the GOOD of such an
evolutionary step.
> So far the increase in intellect has only gotten us into deeper
> trouble. Without a drastic change in world mindset I can't see a
>fifth level doing anything but getting us in deeper. Please show
>me where I am wrong.
No wrongness about intellect, but a fifth level will - as said - check
Intellect and get us back onto the right path again.
TOR
Even if we are fellow citizens we will have to stick to English. You
took a long time to unlurk, but your entry was an impressive one.
Particularly well did I like the dimension metaphor regarding the Q-
levels. Even if we have touched it earlier (in the discussion) your
two/three dimension comparison was a very apt one. I
immediately claim it as relevant to my SOLAQ- Intellect idea.
Intellect is a DIMENSION where (like the spatial ones) one
characteristic dominate. Two diametrically opposed ideas cannot
co-exist within Q-intellect any more that depth and height can
within the same dimension.
>- Atoms used to make life don't succumb to entropy as often
Succumb to entropy? What is that exactly?
>- Biological beings being governed by society don't seem as
> influenced by survival of the fittest/evolution/ecology rules etc.
Yes, this I understand and agree on.
>- People who are influenced by intellect don't do what the society
> level expects them to do.
True!
> - People/whatever influenced by a 5th level will probably seem
> quite irrational.
I saw Magnus comments and also remember Denis remark how
talking MOQ to people in the street would attract strange glances
:-)
> Each level has a larger and larger diversification of
> implementations: - A computer hardware architecture can
>support a lot of different implementations of operating systems,
>which each can support a large number of implementations of
>programs. - The inorganic level has a single implementation
>throughout the universe (except for black holes perhaps...)
>The organic level may vary in how it is implemented on different
> planets, and has a huge level of different implementations on
>earth (species etc)
I agree to it all, highlighting the one about life on other planets
because it fits my view that it will be Q-Organic nevertheless.
>-The social level is only active in one of these species (sort
> of), yet has many implementations within this (cultures)
> - The intellectual level can have many implementations within a
> culture (philosophical directions etc). The interesting thing here
> is if it is so dependant on the underlying implementation of
> the social level that a similar intellectual implementation can't
> accurately exist on top of another social implementation
> (culture). - So the 5th level must be able to have many
> implementations within a given intellectual implementation;
> Quality seems to be what makes more than one interpretation > of mathematics or
>other intellectual implementation possible, > > so once again quality might be more
>rigidly attached to the 5th >level.
> - I guess this isn't necessarily very bottom-up, but still useful.
> A higher level obviously doesn't just appose it's lower level it
> helps it:
> - Well, Biology doesn't do squat for Inorganic
> - Society actually also preserves life / creates more life
> - Intelect creates social sciences/inventions etc that benefit
> society -
> So level 5 also has to help preserve the intellectual
> level to survive.
Yes, that's the rule.
> I guess this can go on forever, however, using these 4 useful but
> perhaps mostly convenient levels to describe a 5th might not be
> useful since we're in the 4th one and thus they are too, they
> don't "point" towards a fifth level, they're stuck inside.
All levels inside Intellect? Here's where I deviate. Look to Roger's
and yours truly.
> How about we have a role play where we pretend we're >
Victorians
> and try to fathom a 4th intellectual level on top of our nice 3
> existing ones, using only social etiquette and not reasoning
> and logic in out discussion? :-)
Interesting.
Thanks everyone.
Bo
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