[MD] From each... to each

[Heather Perella]

Hello Platt and others,

 
> >      Platt said:  "So I don't knock $. I think
> Bill
> > Gates deserves every nickle of his fortune
> considering
> > what he has done to foster interpersonal
> communication
> > such as you and I enjoy at this very moment."
> > 

   SA said earlier:  It is the rigid value this
culture places in
> $
> > that I knock.

Platt said: 
> Rigid value we place in dollars?  I see $ has having
> changing value. The 
> more you have, generally speaking, the less value
> you place in it. The 
> first dollar you earn is usually much more of value
> to you than the 
> millionth. Like water, when there's plenty of it, it
> has little value. 
> When you are dying of thirst, it's priceless. So I'm
> not sure just what 
> you mean by $ having rigid value. 
> 
> > It's not Bill Gates.  He is playing the
> > very serious game of this culture, and at any
> point,
> > along any discussion, about any one person we
> easily
> > could notice the human and value them plainly and
> > simply as the human being they are, not value the
> $
> > attached to their pocket.
> 
> Some humans have more value than others. Bill Gates,
> for example, has a 
> lot more value to me (and to the world I would
> claim) than Bin Laden.

     This value you mention has nothing to do with $. 
This value is of a different moral order of which of
the two are valuing human life.  I don't see how $
sets Bill Gates and Bin Laden apart from each other. 
They both were or still are very rich in the sense of
$.

   Platt said:  In 
> Pirsig we find more value in "a Galileo fitting
> social repression from a 
> common criminal fighting social repression. It has,
> as a result, been the 
> champion of both. That's the root of the problem."
> (Lila, 24) But, I agree 
> that money alone doesn't determine a person's value.
> Rembrandt, Vermeer 
> and Van Gogh were not rich.

  Yes.
 
Platt said:
> >      Why has he had to foster interpersonal
> > communication you and I enjoy?  What about cell
> > phones?  They are not just convenience tools that
> make
> > it easier for us to talk to each other.  They are
> also
> > survival tools made to keep intact a value that we
> > each have more deeply and part of the larger world
> of
> > beauty that I mentioned, which is the
> interpersonal
> > communication.  
> 
> Well, we survived very well without cell phones for
> a few million years.

     Yes, exactly, the value in money stretches our
culture into separations, and we have had to come up
with ways to keep these older, more cherishable
values, which include interpersonal communication
intact.  
 
Platt said:
> As for a larger world of beauty, yes, yes, yes. But
> somehow I don't 
> associate cell phones with that world.

  Exactly, cell phones are just ropes holding the
culture together.  Without interpersonal communication
this culture would fall apart.  So luckily somebody
came along and invented cell phones for all of us that
need to communicate with other, but don't have the
quality time or valuable local distance to just talk
face to face.  How many husbands, wives, boyfriends,
girlfriends, friends, family members, bosses,
employers, etc.. need cell phones to make the
necessary communications happen?  Many, too many I
would say.

   Platt said:
 Museums, wide
> open spaces, symphony 
> halls, love making--those are some of the access
> points to the "larger 
> world," not cell phones. 

     Cell phones only because of the valuable
communications that are made by some (I don't have
one, because of a story about gorillas being killed to
extinction in Africa due to rock being mined there for
cell phones, labtops, etc..., yet, my wife does, in
case I am away somewhere necessary and she goes into
labor), made by some to keep valuable communication
lines open due to the necessary separations that $
leads us towards for we need to travel far and wide
for increasingly long time frames, especially if, as
me, when my wife works at different times of the day,
than I do.  This has become a cultural necessity.  I
hope to get a better position where I work, and I work
hard to increase my chances.  I just hope I don't miss
out too much on the young ones life that is on the way
in my wife's lovely growth in the tummy area.
 
Platt said:
> >      Imagine our lives not being able to make such
> > tools that keep such interpersonal communications
> > possible.  In the culture, we would be very
> isolated
> > from each other.  Look around, the village is
> gone.  I
> > can't simply get up and go next door to the
> neighbors
> > house or find my wife nearby, either.  You want to
> sit
> > down and chat.  That'all cost you $.  
> 
> Lots of people, including Pirsig, claim we're
> isolated from each other 
> today in spite of all the communication tools. "A
> scientific, intellectual 
> culture had become a culture of millions of isolated
> people living and 
> dying in little cells of psychic solitary
> confinement, unable to talk to 
> one another, really, and unable to judge one another
> because 
> scientifically speaking it is impossible to do so."
> (Lila, 22) Personally 
> I don't find "socializing" all that an attractive as
> a past time. I'd 
> rather read instead.

     Nothing against reading, I do that often,
especially at work on the good behavior days, which
are far and few in-between, and I read the posting
here since I'm around the house a lot fixing it.  It
is fun to go fishing with my wife though, and when I
used to go fishing with friends that I eventually ran
away from due to their drinking and drug habits that I
wanted to have no part of.
 
     Platt said:
> >      When you look at interpersonal communication
> you
> > notice the $ aspect.  I am focused on the personal
> > aspect.  Are you or I wrong?

     I am focused on the personal aspect, but it is
the effort, the gas, the vehicles, the jobs that I
have to have to have these personal aspects continue.

     SA said earlier:  I would say on the other hand
> we
> > can talk more easily with somebody in Africa.  So
> we
> > give up the local, in our own hands experience and
> > exchange that for the more global, somebody else
> takes
> > care of it for us experience.

  Platt said:
> I find it very easy to talk to my neighbors, so I
> don't relate to what you 
> say about it being "difficult to contact each
> other." Which means I don't 
> agree with Pirsig on his claim of "psychic solitary
> confinement" either.

  I have no quality time, too talk with them.  I
involve myself in activities that I find few people
around here do.  For one, we are working on putting
walls up in our new house.  I go fishing, and much of
this psychic solitary confinement is probably my
fault.  I had friends that I fished with and
backpacked with.  Well, one friend, since all the
other friends we had sat around in their houses,
occasionally sat by a fire out in the woodsy yard at
times, but these other friends at the time did more
drinking and drugs than anything else.  What about
that one friend that I did have?  Well, he drank and
did drugs.  Yet, he walked in the woods more often. 
Yet, I made a decision that I wouldn't associate with
him anymore when I met my to-be wife.  Why?  I didn't
want her around that kind of world.  I drank at times,
but did not get into the drugs.  In a way I sacrificed
a friend for what I thought would become a family life
without drugs and drinking around.  I don't know... I
miss those times I fished and camped with somebody I
could simply call a friend.  I'm not perfect.

SA

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