[MD] French ingredient in the soup of sentiments

[craigerb at comcast.net]

Arlo,
Your citations show that for Pirsig the problems are not the result of a free-market, but in spite of it.  (You might say, rather, they are the result of free will.) 

Are problems in ZMM the result of "government interference in the market"? No. I think you'll agree such interference has its own set of problems.  (see Pirsig's characterization of Communist systems as Qualityless.)
Craig 
-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Arlo J. Bensinger" <ajb102 at psu.edu> 

> [Arlo previously] 
> Remember that the problems in consumption/production described in ZMM are a 
> result NOT of government interference, but of an SOMist-based free-market. 
> 
> [Craig] 
> Do you have a citation for this statement? It doesn't sound familar. 
> 
> [Arlo] 
> In ZMM, the crisis originates from an undergirding SOMist mindset that has 
> deteriorated both production and consumption. No government agency was forcing 
> this onto the "market". As Pirsig said... 
> 
> "Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern 
> American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized 
> typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized 
> food in stylized kitchens in stylized houses. Plastic stylized toys for 
> stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their 
> stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it 
> once in a while. It’s the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped 
> over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by 
> people who, though stylish, don’t know where to start because no one has ever 
> told them there’s such a thing as Quality in this world and it’s real, not 
> style. Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like 
> tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and 
> objects, the cone from which the tree must start." 
> 
> No one was FORCING the market to provide "stylized refrigerators" and "plastic 
> stylized toys". No one was forcing people to "buy them". But they WERE - in the 
> free market - because "no one has ever told them there's such a thing as 
> Quality". 
> 
> Here, Pirsig is correct in demonstrating that any "market" is not without 
> constraint, indeed, it is constrained by the metaphysical underpinnings of the 
> culture. 
> 
> Pirsig continues, "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." 
> 
> Finally, Pirsig offers this. "To speak of certain government and establishment 
> institutions as "the system" is to speak correctly, since these organizations 
> are founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle. 
> They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all 
> other meaning and purpose. 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." 
> 
> Pirsig correctly points out that the root problem is not "certain government and 
> establishment institutions", but rather "structural conceptual relationships" 
> (the cultural value system, language). What we need, the book proposes, is to 
> abandom SOMist structural thought, which lead to the "death force", the 
> dealignment of craft with art, the production of junk, and the consumption of 
> the same, paid for and supported by the "vendors of style". SOMist "free 
> market". Or perhaps rather, there is no such thing, really, as a "free market", 
> because the market is alwasy constrained by the dialogic, metaphysical values 
> of the culture. When those "values" are SOMist, you get all the problems Pirsig 
> describes, problems continuing today since, of course, its STILL an SOMist 
> market. 
> 
> This SOMist market (which of course Pirsig rightly discusses as involving BOTH 
> consumption AND production) has had profound impact on the Quality of Labor. He 
> says, "When one isn’t dominated by feelings of separateness from what he’s 
> working on, then one can be said to "care" about what he’s doing. That is what 
> caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one’s doing. When one 
> has this feeling then he also sees the inverse side of caring, Quality itself." 
> It is this "care", this "identification", that Pirsig feels is also at the core 
> of the problems he is addressing. "The creator of it feels no particular sense 
> of identity with it. The owner of it feels no particular sense of identity with 
> it. The user of it feels no particular sense of identity with it. Hence, by 
> Phædrus’ definition, it has no Quality." 
> 
> Another key statement in ZMM Pirsig makes is, "Programs of a political nature 
> are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the 
> underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right 
> only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is 
> first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there." 
> In Pirsig's writing, individuals, dominated by an SOMist mindset, were NOT 
> responding to Quality, because they could not see it. The entire book is an 
> attempt to correct that, to give people a vocabulary, a dialectic if you will, 
> with which to effect change, first in their own "values", then naturally the 
> "social values" will change, and finally then will the political. 
> 
> Does that answer your question, or perhaps you'd care to show me how the 
> problems in ZMM are the result of "government interference in the market"? 
> 
> Arlo 
> 
>