Hullo Wim,
I am unfamiliar with the "law of the inhibiting lead" that you describe, so
may be misunderstanding what you are presenting. When you say the "next step
in social progress is usually set not by the leading society, but by a
society that is
just lagging behind", your postulate seems to be that the 'best adjusted'
group in society is less adjusted to change than the groups lagging behind.
This would be the evolutionary equivalent of an organism that has become so
finely attuned to its environment that any significant change to that
environment is likely to severely disadvantage it. When you say "Maybe this
"law of the inhibiting lead" is also valid for intellectual patterns of
values?", you then argue that a similar thing can occur at the intellectual
level.
While I accept that this can occur, and an organism, society, or idea
(intellect?) can become too finely tuned to a context that is itself subject
to change, it seems the argument is all about issues of scale. Probably no
amount of variation would have helped the dinosaurs in the event of a major
catastrophic event such as a strike by a comet on Earth. It is also about
good luck or otherwise. Many species extinctions were probably avoidable had
the cards fallen differently. Some of the species that have survived to
prosper may also be the consequence of a lucky break rather than any greater
'fitness' of the organism. (The Wollomi pine, which survived close to
extinction in a couple of canyons close to Sydney for millions of years, was
fortunate to be discovered by an acquisitive species, us, which is now
breeding up stock for sale all over the world. It may have a very bright
future.) Put bluntly, I find it hard to accept that this is a 'law', though
I can accept it is a common enough pattern.
Taking the next step, which attempts to place science in the role of the
leading intellectual pattern, with religion as the 'lagging behind' but more
adaptable alternative, seems to me to be begging too many questions. It is
an argument that taken too seriously would virtually destroy any possibility
of discussing 'progress' or 'creative advance', since every new emergence of
quality could be immediately challenged as leading to too great an
adjustment to the new context. In Pirsig's example, the Brujo would be seen
as leading his people into a 'dead-end' compact with the conquering white
race. Lagging behind would ultimately offer them a better chance of making a
creative advance in some future world. No, it doesn't work.
A principle that emerges from both therapy and spiritual development seems a
better basis for the issues you are discussing. 'Health' is defined in
Gestalt therapy as 'letting the situation dictate'. It can be described more
broadly as 'attending to what is'. 'Immediacy' is at the core of it.
Immediacy means not that I am unable to look outside the present moment, but
that I am truly open to that moment. Any organism, society or idea that
loses contact with what is, risks disaster. Religions have been particularly
unfortunate in their ability to direct attention away from what is, towards
whatever practices, beliefs or dogma they promote. Their survival owes more,
I am sure, to their ability to assuage fear, fear that all too often they
have helped engender, than to their dynamism. (However I do accept that in
an 'ideal' religion, openness is extremely important. It's just that most
people encounter very closed religions indeed. In my view the Quakers are
close to the ideal I suggest.)
If what we are discussing is "propagating openness to real radical new
ideas", then I suspect there is a further problem. Pirsig's hierarchy puts
ideas at the top of the heap of static quality, with only undifferentiated
dynamic quality above this. Mystics, though, are not very impressed with
ideas. This brings us back to the vexed question of a fifth level (a level
of art). My rather limited contact with the mystic world view suggests that
Wilber is correct in assuming that there are human developmental stages
beyond those which focus on ideas. My recent post to David with the colour
coding of the Spiral Dynamics levels is a new statement of this same
argument. The (orange) level 5 of scientific achievement corresponds to the
ideas level in Pirsig's hierarchy. Even if we include the (green) 'sensitive
self' level in this, and I see no good reason to do so, Graves identifies
the integrative (yellow) and holistic (turquoise) levels above. Wilber
normally lists three 'transpersonal' stages, the 'psychic', the 'subtle' and
the 'causal', and is inclined to regard the 'non dual' as an even higher
stage.
Wilber says "dualisms - between mind and body, mind and brain, consciousness
and form, mind and nature, subject and object, Left and Right - cannot be
solved on the relative plane - which is why that problem has never been
solved by conventional philosophy. The problem is not solved, but rather
dissolved, in the primordial state, which otherwise leaves the dualisms just
as they are, possessing a certain conventional or relative reality, real
enough in their own domains, but not absolute." (A Brief History of
Everything, p 232) My argument links with this by asserting that the path to
the transpersonal is through attending to what is. As such, it is not an
intellectual path, though it can be discussed using language and intellect
by those who have experienced it. It is an experiential path, open to
dynamic quality, but not mired in the intellectual level, which it
surpasses. From this point of view, ideas are as constrictive of 'openness'
as is society of ideas. Ideas distort our perception. They force it into an
intellectual mold which is distanced from what is. They have a value at
their level, but it is not the ultimate level. Does this make sense to you?
Slightly off the point of the above, but perhaps relevant to some recent
posts of yours, is the following. I am not sure I find it totally
convincing, though.
Cohen and Stewart, in 'The Collapse of Chaos', make this point. "Any
major ideological system, such as the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, the
Republican party, Communism, or Science, tends to become more and more
"frozen" in its overall outlines as it grows, develops and becomes stronger.
It has more to lose if it does not preserve its old ways. On the other hand,
it lives in a changing environment. People's views of the world change. Big
ideologies remain the same by perpetually modifying the detailed memetic
structure, in order to buffer themselves against changes in the intellectual
environment. This is internal canalization; they change in order to stay the
same ... On the other hand, again just as in genetic assimilation, when a
big ideology changes - especially when it does so in a dramatic fashion -
the necessary memes have usually been floating around for ages as
intellectual undercurrents, maybe as heresies, never to be spoken but still
widely recognized." (p 359-360) According to these authors, memes share a
common feature with other evolutionary systems, in that the forms of
organisms or organizations change most while the gene pool or meme pool is
static, but remain static while the genes or memes change most. What do you
think of this?
Must go.
Regards,
John B
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