Dear John B.,
You wrote 29/3 17:35 +1000:
'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.'
I don't know whether the writings of the Dutch historian that coined the
(Dutch) equivalent of the 'law of the inhibiting lead' (Jan Romein) have
been translated into English. It has become a common expression in Dutch. My
dictionary translates it into English as 'dialectics of progress' and a
quick search on the web learns me that that expression is (at least
sometimes) in exactly the same meaning. You are not familiar with that
expression either?
I wouldn't say that a leading society is 'best adjusted', but -in the
context in which I used it- that it has the best balance between stability
(resistance to change) and versatility (adjustability to change): it has the
best chances of continuing forever by either resisting change or adapting to
it and therefore not enough 'need' to jump to a next level of quality that
might 'turbo-charge' its social progress.
You wrote:
' I find it hard to accept that this is a "law", though I can accept it is a
common enough pattern.'
Good, because I take it to be a pattern, too, and not a (causal) law. (Jan
Romein probably did intend it to be a causal law. Being a self-proclaimed
'theoretical historian' he was searching for such laws. I didn't read him in
the original, however, so I'm not sure how many qualifications he added.)
Lagging behind certainly doesn't guarantee a better chance of making a
creative advance. There is always only one who leads and several who lag
behind and only one of the laggards will make the next jump ahead. The only
thing Jan Romein stated, was that the chances that the leading society makes
the next jump are small compared with the chances that one of the laggards
will and that it will probably be a laggard that is not too far behind the
leader.
My application to intellectual patterns of values was, that science leads
because it has the best balance between stability (a strong core
of -metaphysical and other- ideas that is very resistant to change) and
versatility (a large area of fringe ideas that are consistent with the core,
but are nevertheless competing for the status of being 'most true' and that
therefore make science as a whole adaptable to changing 'data'). I said I
consider religion as an intellectual pattern of values (trying to capture
some 'truth' explaining experience) to be inferior to science. That makes it
one of the laggards that may make the next jump beyond science, a jump
science will not make because it has too much vested interests in its core
ideas.
I do see a lot of value in 'letting the situation dictate', 'attending to
what is' and 'immediacy', but I don't see how it is a better basis for the
issues I was discussing. For me it translates simply as 'openness to DQ',
which is only half of what we need. We need both static quality and Dynamic
Quality for social progress. My application of the pattern of the inhibiting
lead to social and intellectual progress was an attempt to analyze HOW sq
and DQ interact to create overall progress toward DQ across the greatest
span and depth. That openness to DQ is an essential ingredient of progress
is obvious.
Indeed 'religions have been particularly unfortunate in their ability to
direct attention away from' DQ. Following a suggestion from Sam 26/3
12:51 -0000 that has been due to those religions' role in preserving static
social quality. Now that religion has bequeathed this role to science in
Western societies it can concentrate on its role in changing social patterns
of values by 'pointing to the moon' of DQ (and it must do so if it wants to
keep any social relevance).
I don't experience clear patterns of values yet beyond Pirsig's intellectual
patterns of values (in my interpretation: with as distinctive characteristic
the creation/postulation of 'reality' or 'fantasy' as you call it
elsewhere). Not even with the help of Wilber's concept of 'transpersonal
consciousness' or my own mystic experience. So I tend to interpret Wilber's
stages or levels of consciousness as being just a subdivision of Pirsig's
intellectual pattern of values and not as a (already successful) way to find
a latch for DQ beyond intellect.
Regarding your quotation from Cohen and Stewart, from 'The Collapse of
Chaos', I prefer (at least when writing for this list) thinking in terms of
intellectual values and intellectual patterns of values (distinguishing them
at times from ideas and sets of ideas if necessary) over thinking in terms
of 'memes'. It all gets too confusing if we mix up too many concepts.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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