[MD] Where have all the values gone?

[Platt Holden]

Hi Erin, Khaled: 

Khaled comments on my post about the loss of immigrant values:

> Oh Platt you are coming to our side.
> It's really hard to keep the values you are speaking of AND succumb to
> Madison avenue at the same time. The consumerism that drives this
> country is the same evil that is eroding these values. ( before you
> put words in my mouth, NO ONE is asking for government intervention )
> As long as the populous is like sheep, easily manipulated to spend and
> buy, they have sold their souls to repay those credit cards.
 
Erin makes I what I think is a very valid point.

>   Just watch the movie I just mentioned.  Anti-consumerism are just as
>   capable of eroding values. What is "our side" by the way?  

Here between Khaled and Erin is a typical moral argument that maybe 
Pirsig's metaphysics of morality can help us analyze if not 
completely solve. For starters I would offer that threatened violence 
of any kind against the social order is a resort to biological 
morality which society has every moral right to put down. As for the 
populous being "like sheep" perhaps it's because SOM intellect which 
dominates thought today considers values to be relative and "merely 
an artificial social code that has nothing to do with the real nature 
of the world." (Lila, 12)

In any case, I would like to see Khaled and Erin continue this 
conversation because at heart is the question we all must answer --
" What is good?" Or, to ask the question raised in the example Khaled 
used,  why is consumerism "bad?" 

Platt