[MD] U.S. Values: the Jones

[Platt Holden]

> Ant, Platt,
> 
> Of course Platt has to rely on mischaracterization, and utter dismissal
> of over 70% (all of ZMM and everything in LILA about Indians) of
> Pirsig's work, to support his views. The "free market" has absolutely
> nothing to do with what I said, and Pirsig's support of the free market
> in Lila holds no contradiction with his statements in ZMM, that a
> "market" is only as good as the "metaphysics" players come to it with.
 
In Lila Pirsig made no such caveat about the free market being only as 
good as someone's metaphysics. If you want to read that into it, make
sure you identify it as Arlo's dream, not Pirsig's words.  

> Consider this... in 1850 if I criticized slavery, was I "anti-free
> market"?
> 
> I mean, at the time the "market" was "free". Its just that the
> underlying cultural values held that blacks were inferior beings. Thus,
> they could be traded like chattle.
> 
> It was not the "market", it was the "values" held and advanced by the
> culture. And so a criticism of "slavery" was a criticism of foundations
> and outcomes of those foundations. Pirsig's condemnation of commodity
> fetishism in ZMM is similar. And still very relevent today.

If you can find where Pirsig made any connection whatsoever between 
slavery and the free market, let us know. Otherwise, dream on.   

> In ZMM, Pirsig brings a strong condemnation of the modern SOMist
> dichotomy that causes, among other maladies, the commodity fetishism
> described by Marx. Pirsig wasn't saying (and neither am I) that the
> solution is to make the market "not free", but to criticize and condemn
> the values people were bring TO the market.
> 
> Let's not forget too, that Pirsig recently called ZMM "the path to
> enlightment", and LILA "the path back". Hardly a dismissal of his
> earlier work. Like most authors, he covers new ground once he has
> thoroughly covered older ground.

He covered new ground in Lila alright -- a sign of his personal growth 
as he found a new metaphysics and identified the openness to Dynamic 
Quality of the free market  vs. the stagnation of Marxist socialism.