From: "B. Lane Robertson" <metaphy@hotmail.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: Structure of facts and opinions]
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 13:46:02 PDT
Yes, I see an emergent order. I also see this
harking back to pre-social evolutionary behaviors.
But, like Steve, I don't see this to be a
dichotomy (where "social" might be an arbitrary
dividing line that might apply memetics to people
while somehow suggesting that it doesn't apply to
all stages of the evolutionary picture).
In fact, I have found it helpful to trace the
pattern of change to a level that precedes
"animal"... and even "plant" for that matter. I
have found it useful to see the emergent pattern
of development as having characteristics which
apply to the physical universe... in the patterns
which lend themselves to the creation and
breakdown of matter and to the ordering of systems
of energy into positives and negatives which
pre-date, and foster, living systems.
that the arrangement of elements within a system
follow the idea of "complexity" to both maintain a
certain ordering and to also tend in the direction
of a more complex ordering. As such, when the
characteristics of non-living systems become those
of living systems... I have been able to keep the
idea of an evolutionary ontology which builds upon
previous levels.
In the evolution of humanity, it would seem that
what was once consciously sought (sex, nutrition,
safety, self-awareness) are later organized such
that they become instinctual components to a more
complex arrangement of these same behaviors whose
lower-level ordering is subsumed by the more
complex one (the more complex ordering suggesting
that a new developmental task becomes paramount...
the training of this new behavior helping to push
the older behaviors into the background).
Thus, the "intentional" ordering of necessary
behavior (of objects, etc.) becomes a drive, which
becomes an instinct... as new behaviors become
necessary.
After individual self-awareness is attained and
made instinctual, then it becomes necessary to
establish possession rules, object permanence
rules, repairative rules, distribution rules,
language, art, imagination, control, standards,
and recreation. My main point, however is that
these necessities are *predicted*,
developmentally, by the ordering of systems whose
rules are set way before social needs are
addressed and even before the particular ordering
required for life is maintained at the level of
energy and matter.
B. Lane Robertson
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