[MD] Where have all the values gone?

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

Mornin' Platt,

[Platt]
I wonder if you consider those motivated by profit in a free market to be
immoral. You seem to believe that other motivations such as social recognition
or personal satisfaction are morally superior to seeking a financial return
from one's investment in time and effort.  Would you care to elaborate on the
moral standing of various motivations involved in work? Is Pirsig's moral
structure helpful in answering the question? 

[Arlo]
I'm not saying anything is superior to anything else. I was just wondering if in
your proposal that "profit makes possible quality things", you meant "profit"
soley in terms of financial renumeration or some form of material acquisition.

In your last post, you seemed to indicate that short of this form of material
profit, the only other option to "get people to do quality work" (my quote) was
coercion.

I asked in a previous post how something like the "Wally Compensation
Equilibrium Project" could be criticized from within mercantilian language
(that the acquisition of wealth is what drives human activity). His statement,
"my goal is to lower the quality of my work until it is consistent with my
salary" seems to point directly to the loss of craftsmanship that started this
thread.

If material profit, or money, is what "makes possible quality things", then
Wally's statement is unchallengable, and indeed, a logic and natural statement
that all should embrace.

But belief, though, is that people "labor" (and I'll use this work to refer to
both "work" and "non-work" deliberate activity) and produce quality things when
(in alignment with ZMM) they "identify" with the labor. Then they are guided by
forces (DQ) that exists in artistic relation between them and the object of
their labor. Material compensation is not the primary motivator (and certainly
not the exclusive, all powerful one the mercantilists see it as) of labor
activity.

I think this rests on a specific division in mercantilist language, namely that
"work activity" must be induced by external forces (money profit), while
"non-work activity" is internally driven. The answer for this is likely
"identification", we "identify" with "repairing our motorcycle", we "do not
identify" with our "job". I think it is the idea that we "need money to labor"
that contributes to the idea that "work" is something external and not
something we would ever normally do. Like Marx, I believe that this distinction
is artificial.

Now, is the solution to "just go ahead and identify" with every tedious,
monotonous, mundane task that is given us? Maybe? What do you think?

As for "symbolic profit", I tossed that out there because I do thihk that many
people labor in order to achieve social status recognition or admiration. Most
people who find themselves in situations like Wally would find motivation in
achieving status within his/her immediate peer group, or perhaps recognition
from the industry. This, too, is external motivation. I only presented it as
another explanation as to why people labor.

You ask about Pirsig's moral structure, and I think that a re-read of ZMM shows
that "identification" with one's work is the core, or seed, for the production
of "quality things". That is, Pirsig may say, "identification with one's labor
gives us quality things." I think this identification, and internally driven
pursuit of quality, gives us the Open Source movement Horse mentioned. Maybe a
little symbolic profit thrown in among the crowd, but primarily identification
and an artistic flow between programmer and code.

Two quotes from ZMM point to this.

"But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain.
Good-natured, friendly, easygoing...and uninvolved. They were like spectators.
You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had
handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, "I
am a mechanic." At 5 P.M. or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they
would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were
already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job. In their
own way they were achieving the same thing John and Sylvia were, living with
technology without really having anything to do with it. Or rather, they had
something to do with it, but their own selves were outside of it, detached,
removed. They were involved in it but not in such a way as to care."

"It is this identity that is the basis of craftsmanship in all the technical
arts. And it is this identity that modern, dualistically conceived technology
lacks. 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. ... It was beautiful because the people who worked on it had a way
of looking at things that made them do it right unselfconsciously. They didn’t
separate themselves from the work in such a way as to do it wrong. There is the
center of the whole solution."

Arlo