[MD] French ingredient in the soup of sentiments

[David M]

Arlo

Do you think the atomised position of indivduals in free markets
reflects an SOM understanding of how society's function and evolve?

Would the spread of intellectual values cause the collapse of market
economies dependent on perpetual/unsustainable growth & consumption?

DM


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <craigerb at comcast.net>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 4:21 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] French ingredient in the soup of sentiments


> 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
>>
>>


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