Hello Elliot,
I have heard of this "altruistic" behavior but with squirrels I think.
When I heard it described it was as a hard-wired survival response.
To me it sounded like it was still biological.
To me this survival response is not equal to life-sacrificing act based on
mythos.
Mythos: a pattern of beliefs expressing often symbolically the characteristic
or prevalent attitudes in a group or culture
Mythos does have a social connotation to me but it seems messy to
extend it to your ant analogy.
Ants will sacrifice themselves for a greater good based on a mythos???
Please expand on this some more -- I am not quite sold on your idea.
>
>Elliot:
>Well, thats the point, we cant have any idea what an ants mythos would be.
>But lizards (who have no society outside of occasional mating rituals) live
>by biological value, preserve self. Ants will sacrifice themselves for a
>greater good, which seems like a social action to me. Why they choose to or
>value to do it, i deem mythos (for the social connotation), even though it
>isnt in symbols as we understand them.
>
>Elliot
>
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:19 BST