At 2:15 AM -0500 12/12/99, Xcto@aol.com wrote:
>I believe the mythos is the most basic foundation of the Social Level. The
>mythos is the cultural riverbed that our waters flow through and it's static
>nature determines many boundaries in which we can dynamically change without
>creating chaos for ourselves. The most important part though, is how our
>Intellect resides in this Social level in such a way that is controls it but
>is dependent on it; the dynamic part of the Intellect could not survive
>without the Social level's stability (Maslow).
Ahh yes.. But also.. the social level's stability could not exist without
the intellectual framework that created it in the first place. Society is
formed by intellect.
Intellect is also formed by society and supported by social systems. Which
came first? The chicken or the egg.
Quality.
Gives me an answer anyway to quiet that poking part of my mind.
Mythos though... dreams and such. I sense extreme danger in the encoding
of the mythos. I sense truth traps which never let go - for they are
beyond intellect - or at least beyond our intellect. Can one choose a
mythos for oneself? Can one make a conscious choice and believe in dragons
and beasts which one cannot see? It's obviously not a rational thing.
We're stuck on the rational plain and yet I too feel an echo beyond
rationality which speaks of beasts beyond our ken. I remember feeling it
most strongly in a book called "Black Elk Speaks" and were the transcribed
visions of an Indian Medicine man from before a time white men entered his
world. Yet he saw the whole thing in vision He saw the streets of london
and many years when he was old he went and things were exactly as he'd
remembered and described. He also saw the end of the world in his vision,
and the terms he described it in matched in many respects the book of
Revelation. It sent chills. My intellect suddenly was trying to grasp an
unknowable and trying to form a static pattern of belief. At the same
time, my intellect instinctively drove me to back away from the mythos
which was beyond intellectual control and seemed to want to envelope reason
itself. Sort of a push/pull effect.
And so I escaped to the rational confines of a logical discussion on
metaphysics .. pray continue...
>But these pre-historical myths do not tell us the Moral Laws which the social
>level demands, the 'Thou Shalts' (as in Thou Shalt Not Kill) I guess you
>would say. When you think about it, I guess you must say that the 'Thou
>Shalts' are the static Intellectual representations of the Moral Laws which
>the Social level has taken as its Principles (the basic unit of my
>Intellectual Level (MOxcto until more people agree with me)).
ok so far...
Thus, the
>Moral Laws do not change the mythos, but are created by a social group
Uhh yes and no.. I'd say that since the mythos generates the social group,
the mythos also generates the moral laws. Moral laws do not change the
mythos, but if the mythos changes, the moral laws are changed too since
they flow from the mythos. Mythos generates law, not other way around.
Dead right. The social group? That's generated by the mythos too. For
any grouping of people - mere biological beasts - is nothing without the
underlying belief system that joins them for communication and
understanding. It underlies all.
and
>creates a different myth that is a contains the shared mythos plus a series
>of laws and culture that are special to that group.
Ok... now we're getting into unfamiliar territory. For our intellectual
culture
has expanded to contain the perspective of many mythoses. (Mythi?) We get
to chose our myths? We get to create it too? That seems insane. How can
one choose between different mythos? There has to be a basic source of
value ...
What the heck is the Mythos? It's either a human intellectual
construction of meaning beyond meaning - metaphysics that is - or it's a
story that comes before words. The story is the same story told by all
people, and all people have access to the story. But everybody tells the
story with enough variation to amuse themselves.
Ok. I like that one better. So the mythos is pre-intellectual. Right?
Not an intellectual construct, right? The intellectual baggage that
arranges itself around the words with which people express their
intellectual understandings of this preintellectual awareness - that's
religion of some sort or another. The Mythos, which is on a higher level
and is in fact, what we call Dynamic Quality, generates these intellectual
constructs, but the closest we get to the pure mythos itself is in
pre-intellectual visions of beasts and dreams. Is that what is being
understood?
>
>Now of course, this directly attacks many people's idea of the
>Social/Intellectual relationship, but this is as good as a time to argue it
>out as any.
Amen bro. Bring it out. The social/intellectual relationship seems to
hold a lot of the puzzle indeed.
>
>The point here is to show that the Giant is really the creation of a social
>groups myth, specifically western civilization. The Giant's ability to
>gather power is it's most important reason that it is so predominant today.
>Money is a unit of value, but to me the Social Level's basic unit is power
>(Control). Control of property, instinct, desire, people, ideas. These are
>the static activites of the Social level. Today, money is obvious the
>quickest way to power, but the Celebrity factor shows you don't mean money to
>have Control(though money often is the result of celebrity control).
I like your analysis about the giant being relevant to western
civilization. That makes sense to me. But you switch gears here in a
way that confuses me - you say the social level's basic unit is power.
However, in the beginning of this treatise you said the most basic
foundation of the social level is the mythos. Now you say it's power. I
think you were closer the first time.
All power games operate within statically defined ways, no? We definitely
have enough power to wipe life off of the planet, but what's the point? We
need to have access to values to guide the uses of power - and value comes
from the mythos. We don't have any one mythos anymore. We have a bunch of
competeing mythoses (I get a kick out of the word "mythoses" for some
wierd reason) and no way to distinguish between them. Oh where oh where is
the MoQ when I really need it?
>But the MOQ clearly states that the western civilization is the most moral
>view because of the results; the most dynamic activity is the results of the
>western social systems.
Ah so. Good old pragmatism. We'll accept the morality of Western Civ's
Mythos because we are weller fed than anyone else on the planet. I can
hang with that. Just one problem: we need to define the mythos of western
civilization so we can share the good news. I'm not sure I know which one
we're talking about. We've absorbed so many stories over the years, I'm
not sure which one is the True story of western civilization. Which aspect
of our mythos is it that generates all this social quality which threatens
to cover the entire planet with McDonald Hambruger Whoppers and Coca Cola?
Because I hear another word completely about this morality of western civ.
It comes from the mythos itself and reveals itself as a very beast of a
giant that wants to swallow the whole world and man's soul with it.
I can see the outlines of it. Know what it is? It's the ultimate triumph
of society over the intellect. Society magnified through intellectually
derived technology and is now holding the keys to mythos formation in it's
rabid paws.
And its nothing more complicated than Little junior sitting down in front
of the TV, and learning what is of value in life. That's the beast.
Right there. I can almost see him visible.
>Money is a tool of very dynamic value. But in the
>same way that the dynamic Intellect can degenerate our society, Money can do
>it too. The same can be said of Guns.
>
>What does the MOQ say about gun control?
MoQ says that gun control by federal powers is a bad idea. It's an even
worse idea to form the kind of society that thinks power is value in itself
and arms itself accordingly. And unfortunately, we've already done that.
But once I percieve that a gun is just a tool appropriate to the moment,
and not something to be taken seriously as a thing in itself, I lose
interest in the any discussion of inherent immorality in the thing.
However, there is an inherent immorality in the ideas that have been
fastened upon the thing, but that's from another source. Guns are not
bad. TV shows that train me to desire guns - those are bad.
>What do you say of my ideas?
>
>xcto
I like discussing them. They keep me cranked in there, dude.
jc
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