[MD] The Empire and other deliberations

[Andre Broersen]

MoQ discuss: I wished you peace last time and, now, returning to stable
patterns of signals find a florry of intellectual patterns of value
exchanges that put Wall street exchanges to shame.

Whether you are aware or not does not make one iota of a difference, it's
the people that experience and do something with that experience that makes
a difference and creates a legacy and nothing else.

CEO's walking away with millions...this is an intellectual value at the
level of biology: pure greed...sanctified by society because it contributes
to some sort of celebrity status but totally immoral (in Pirsig's terms..
[his way of thinking] because it  "has a defect in it").

Pirsig again...and I'll paraphrase...sometimes we need to go back to basics
and their origins. What is money? Yes it is a social pattern of value (a
benefit) but what is it? And here a Marxist would say : it is "frozen human
labour"...someone *worked* to make that dollar or euro note possible and in
that process 'gave' it a value because it represents exactly that (
blood,sweat and tears in the middle of bloody hard work). But sometimes a
particular pattern goes off on its own and spirals out of all proportions.

I've read a research paper some time ago that looked at the 'personality' of
(in this case) American middle- and upper level managers (your CEO's) and
the findings were compared against the DSM 4 (or have they developed no. 5
already?) which is an internationally recognised system for psychiatric
disorder classification. What were the findings? and do not quote me on this
but I'm reasonably accurate: they are all personality disorders ( classic
PD's). What does this mean? These people are intelligent, ruthless,
egotistic, egocentric, tend to blame other people for faillures, are totally
devoid of any sense of (social) responsibility and are very dominating. I
have been with them...the feeling they give one is very low quality...eerie.
I am convinced that this is *not* what Pirig meant when he said that social
celebrity is an expression of social DQ ie what we all should aspire to.

"the unchecked free market in the 1800's"... Dickens can paint a lovely
picture of this era...the Victorianpattern of value where being a gentleman
is to be a celebrity...business, loaded with money, contacts, right attitude
etc, etc.The reality is that whilst their husbands did their thing  their
wives went out and did charity work to mop up the excesses of hubbies' work
the consequences of which were in many cases poverty, deprivation sub-human
standards. This work on behalf of the wives developed into the establishment
of the Charity Organisation Society (COS) which in turn developed into
modern day social work)  I think Pirsig hinted at something else:
discipline, fulfilling your potential with care for others, respect for
your elders and authority...etc etc.

Remember Marx said in 1868: I am not a Marxist!!

"Intellectually guided socialsm is a disaster"..."socialists undermine
social value"...I cannot agree more ( having the priveledge of living in one
for the past 2,5 years). What is social value??
In a self proclaimed socialist society ( to be very accurate: when you drive
from Beijing Airport to the city of Beijing there are billboards along the
freeway stating the objective of this ideology: "towards a scientifically
harmonious socialist society), that bases itself on the ideas of one man
(Mao... and for many still GOD!!). Living here painfully shows me everyday
the extent to which this intellectual level has lost its base, ie its social
base...the people and their patterns of value.Creativity, initiative, a
personal idea/ opinion...for these there is no place because "the party
ideology" proscribes what is Value. Intellect has gone off on its own
tangent and in this sense has lost all contact with reality (from which it
came) ie the social level. ( Any difference with what is going on in the US
today???!)
The intellectual level has lost contact with its parent and in this sense I
again agree with Pirsig that sometimes it is necessary to go back to basics.
The gains the intellectual level has made are fantastic but  have never been
"latched"... properly.
And in the sense of socialism being a higher moral order than capitalism..
again ,I agree but I would argue that there are no socialist societies at
present. I don't care what they/you say. And it is interesting to note that
Marx wrote 99%  on analysing capitalism,1 % " On Socialism" and  NOTHING on
communism because he, as he self said, didn't know anything about that
"state".
This is what I meant in an earlier entry.
Do not get me wrong...many gains have been made within the "objective"
sphere (and this has inspired our intellectual patterns of value, but the
development has been uneven).

The "hunger for profit" (greed) for me is a biological pattern of value
enforced and mixed- in with social patterns of value which give it a meaning
it does not have.In other words a 'social justification' which morally
speaking is a lower pattern of value dominating a higher PoV.
I would argue, (and I am going to put my foot in it) that at the
intellectual level we have abandoned our parents. The intellectual level's
succes is mainly in the SOM sphere. So long as an intellectual pattern of
value fails to incorporate a social
(i.e. conscious/subjective/experience/feeling) dimension/ component it will
not be representing an approximation of "reality" as it is experienced by
millions of people around the globe.

And if we now get arguments/ proper interpretations about what "feeling/
experience" really is, or what it means to be "aware", or where one's
"ontological basis" really floats on or what the difference is between
"perception" and "awareness" then I do not understand what and why Pirsig
has tried to give us this MoQ.

Regards
Andre