[MD] French ingredient in the soup of sentiments

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[Khaled]
That is the golden question here. How free is our free will and when does
coercion cross the line.

[Arlo]
Greetings, my fried. As you know, there are multiple forms of coercion. Bourdieu
had postulated that the appropriation of a symbolic system (aka,
"enculturation") was a form of coercion by which the values of the cultural
group were passed to the individuals.

This is not so blatant as "you will value this", but entails the subtle
conceptual metaphors mentioned earlier (such as "argument is war"), and the
powerful coercive ability of the vendors of style (advertising). In a "free
market", an American and a Tibetan Highlander will make radically differnet
"free" decisions. Why is this? Because there is no "objective" decision to
value that is acultural.

This relation, between individual and culture, is, of course, dialectical, in
that it responds over historical time, based largely on
fundamental-foundational belief shifts by the group. The shift from SOM to
MOQ-based thinking was a proposal for such a shift.

The underpinnings of our culture is, undoubtably, mercantilistic. "The Wealth of
Nations" continues to be the kulturbarer from which our valuistic system
derives. In such a culture, the free market will respond as such. In a
non-mercantilistic culture, a free market would not necessarily show the same
trajectory.

"He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of
nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth...but
for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an
understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it."

A free market under the former mindset ("enormous manifestations of power and
wealth") you see what we have today (this was Pirsig's point), a free market
under the later ("to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it") would
behave very differently. Not because of "government interference", but because
the individual value decisions made by individuals in the market would reflect
a different valuation, one that placed "being part of the world" higher than
"manifestations of wealth and power".

This is the point the capistocracy continues to miss. They see only half the
equation (to remove government interference), but denying that there is any
concern (as Pirsig had) for the valuistic underpinnings, the foundational
metaphysics, of individuals in the market. In short, remove the governance but
maintain the "enormous manifestations of power and wealth" SOMist position that
drives their psychological need for power and money.

Indeed, it was BECAUSE the SOMist "free" market commodified people and led to
the aweful state of labor and production in the pre-1920s. A time, of course,
the capistocracy holds dear, but none would want to return to as say, a Pullman
employee, a miner or a factory worker. It was individuals, as SA has recently
pointed out, that demanded "better treatment" "in spite of" the prevailing
SOMist mindset that saw them as nothing but expendable, inhuman resources in
the pursuit of wealth.

Arlo