[MD] grmbl

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 3 Jun 2010 at 10:03, Arlo Bensinger wrote:

[Platt to Ron]
You left out Einstein's final paragraph:

[Arlo]
Actually. You did as well.

"Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest 
significance in our age of transition. Since, under present 
circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has 
come under a powerful taboo..."

Yes, they certainly have (witness Glenn Beck's "nazi tourettes" 
(Lewis Black is awesome!)).

[Platt]
Speaking of Nazis, check this recent news item right out of the pages of 
Goebbels propaganda playbook:

"Over thirty organizations want the Federal Communications Commission to open 
up a probe on "hate speech" and "misinformation" in media."

Full story at:

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/05/should-the-government-keep-tabs-on-hate-
speech.ars

"The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence 
upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a 
positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather 
as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. 
Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives 
of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social 
drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate." (Einstein)

[Arlo]
Sounds like Einstein had a time-travel device and was listening to 
2010 talk radio.

[Platt]
Sounds like Einstein failed to understand the significance of the Declaration 
of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, although he beat a retreat from 
Europe to America when threatened by the National Socialist Workers party of 
Germany. 

He continues, "All human beings, whatever their position in society, 
are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly 
prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and 
deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of 
life." (Einstein)

[Arlo]
This is the same prison Pirsig describes in ZMM.

"Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never see 
anything through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows that 
buried within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the 
manners that will convince themselves they possess Quality, learning 
strange poses of style and glamour vended by dream magazines and 
other mass media, and paid for by the vendors of substance." (Pirsig)

[Platt]
In Lila Pirsig cites SOM as the cause of lost souls:

"A scientific, intellectual culture had become a culture of millions of 
isolated people living and dying in little cells of psychic solitary 
confinement, unable to talk to one another, really, and unable to judge one 
another because scientifically speaking it is impossible to do so." (Lila,22) 

Note the phrase "scientific, intellectual culture" -- further support of Bo's 
interpretation of the intellectual level as SOL.  


"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in 
my opinion, the real source of the evil." (Einstein)

[Arlo]
Pirsig describes the current modes of production in ZMM. "People 
arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight 
to five without question because the structure demands that it be 
that way. There's no villain, no "mean guy" who wants them to live 
meaningless lives, it's just that the structure, the system demands 
it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing 
the structure just because it is meaningless." (ZMM)

[Platt]
A repeat -- needed to penetrate thick skulls:

"What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists, 
reasoning intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the door to 
Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling of things. They closed it because the 
metaphysical structure of their objectivity never told them Dynamic Quality 
exists" (Lila, 17).