Dear David,
Nice to see this idea again. I think it's the second most important
application of MoQ, after the idea of DQ itself.
Have you read this oldie?
http://members.iglou.com/hettingr/pirsig/DefiningSocial.html
peace,
maggie
David Buchanan wrote:
> I'd be especially interested to know what Andy thinks about this post. I'd
> urge anyone familiar with Jung, Campbell and Wilber to chime in as well.
> First, a little joke I heard today...
>
> Did you hear that George W. Bush's mother-in-law lost $8,000 on her Enron
> stock? That explain the gash on his face. : )
>
> Please let me begin by asking every reader, especially the old-timers, to be
> ready to re-think some things and maybe even to let go of some long-held
> views. Its not easy. I'll present just two main ideas about the third level.
> One is about individuals and giants. The other is about the age and depth of
> the third level. Hope they interest you.
>
> The social level is about society, right? Its about the "giant", the
> collective, right? And this is contrasted with the intellectual level, which
> is about the individual, right?
>
> No. Its not right. This is one of the main misconceptions about the 3rd
> level. Collectivity and individuality both exist in both levels. The
> scientific method, for example, absolutely requires many sets of eyeballs
> and peer review. Science is clearly a intellectual activity. Sure,
> philosophers and scientists are individuals but they both need groups and
> institutions to function properly. And social evolution requires the efforts
> of individuals, such as the case of the brujo.
>
> In fact, as Ken Wilber points out, everything in the universe is both an
> individual entity AND part of a larger collective system. Its a basic
> feature of reality. I would challenge anyone to think of something that
> defies this notion. So please, take the idea that the battle between social
> and intellectual values is essentially a battle between collective and
> individual values, write it down on a piece of paper, crumple it up into a
> ball and flush it down the toilet. Its poop. Get rid of it. Ahhhh. What a
> relief.
>
> Social level values are in every individual human being. They go far beyond
> social institutions, conventions and traditions, far beyond issues of power,
> status, money, survival, and those cops and soldiers with their guns. These
> are just some of the most conspicuous features of the social level. It goes
> way deeper than that. When we talk about social level values, we're talking
> about everything that's been produced by the last 100,000 years of cultural
> evolution. The agents of cutting egde evolution in this period were not
> philosophers and scientists, they were shamans, the artists and
> storytellers. This period produced stuff like language, stories, myths,
> religions, political hierarchies, social traditions, and all kinds of
> invisible motivations that inform (form from within) us as individual to
> this very day. You know,... French culture exists, therefore Descartes
> thinks, therefore he is.
>
> My mind's got a mind of it own.
> Takes me out a walking when I'd rather be at home.
> Takes me out to parties when I'd rather be alone.
> Oh, my mind's got a mind of its own. (Jimmy Dale Gilmore - Zen country
> musician)
>
> There is a good reason why the 3rd level seems so enigmatic. The existence
> of SOM's old mind/body problem helps to point out how invisible the 3rd
> level can be. Subjects are minds. Objects are bodies and never the twian
> shall meet. Or so it seemed until very recently. Thanks to guys like Jung
> and Pirsig we can begin to see that there is more than just minds and
> bodies. There's a third thing in between. I mean, it seems pretty clear to
> me that the unconcious mind, which is effectively the source and well spring
> of all myths, religions and all sorts of non-intellectual and unconcious
> motivations, is one of the most powerful and mysterious features of the
> social level. Its one of the things that have evolved in the last 100,000
> years. Its not intellect and its not biology. The unconscious mind is
> somewhere in between and connects the two. Mind/body problem solved. Or
> rather, dis-solved.
>
> And we all still live with it everyday, weather we know it or not. We
> inherit it in the same way that we inherit our biological structures. I know
> Jungian and post-Jungian psychology has it detractors, but don't be fooled.
> The discovery of the unconscious, the collective unconscious and of
> archetypes is just as profound as Darwin's theory of evolution or
> Copernicus' discovery of heliocentric solar system. Its the kind of thing
> that causes us to re-think things in radical ways. The meaning of Jung's
> ideas is still unfolding right now in our lifetime. Mythologists like Joseph
> Campbell and Robert Graves did quite a bit in more recent years to expand on
> the things Jung was saying. Quite simply, myths express social values in
> non-intellectual symbolic language.
>
> More another day, hopefully in response to other posts on this topic. Thanks
> for your time.
>
> DMB
>
>
>
>
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