[MD] French ingredient in the soup of sentiments

[Platt Holden]

SA, Arlo, Margaret, All:

While I appreciate you responses which, in a nutshell, were familiar 
critiques of capitalism, they didn't address the original question I 
raised in introducing this thread, namely, the question of human 
rights. In that regard I found the following op-ed piece in the 
'Washington Times'  of interest:

"These failed economic policies have their origins in -- and have in 
turn fostered further -- the moral failings of France's petulant 
population. Its citizens think the world, society and their neighbors 
owe them a living and they demand secure jobs as a 'right' to be paid 
for by others. If their whims aren't granted they consider themselves 
'slaves.' Bottom line: They want the unearned. And how, exactly, do 
they think their economy, failing under such demands, will continue to 
meet them? Bottom line: They don't think. These children masquerading 
as adults are too busy throwing temper tantrums to ask such questions. 
Who would want to hire such crybabies to begin with?
 
"It doesn't enter their minds or moral code to take personal 
responsibility for their own lives, to act like entrepreneurs by trying 
to make themselves the best employees possible so that their employers 
would work to keep them and to demand complete economic freedom so that 
they and their employers can prosper together.

"The economic mess in France is the manifestation of a moral mess at 
the basis of all welfare states and is a preview of what's in store for 
America if we continue along the path of our Gallic cousins. Only a 
morality of responsible individualism, in France, America and in all 
countries, will bring both peace and prosperity."

To me it has always been somewhat curious in a book devoted to morality 
that Pirsig had little to say about the "morality of responsible 
individualism," probably a result of his general condemnation of 
Victorian moral codes. Yet there's a brief passage in Chap. 17 of Lila 
where he parts the curtain and we get a quick glimpse of his admiration 
of certain Victorian virtues:

"What we tend to forget is that, unlike the European aristocrats they 
aped, the American Victorians were a very creative people. The 
telephone, the telegraph, the rail road, the transatlantic cable, the 
light bulb, the radio, the phonograph, the motion pictures, and the 
techniques of mass production—almost all the great technological 
changes that are associated with the twentieth century are, in fact, 
American Victorian inventions. This city is composed of their value 
patterns! It was their optimism, their belief in the future, their 
codes of craftsmanship and labor and thrift and self-discipline that 
really built twentieth-century America. Since the Victorians 
disappeared the entire drift of this century has been toward a 
dissipation of these values." (Lila, 17)

The French and other European countries who have adopted the values of 
welfare state socialism (including the drift of America towards those 
same values) might do well to ponder Pirsig's description of 
diminishing Victorian values, especially the value of "self-
discipline." Likewise, Pirsig might have done better to emphasize the 
morality of self-responsibility in his metaphysics.

Regards,
Platt