[MD] Shouldn?t we be, like, revolting ?

[david buchanan]

Andre said:
Bovar, Chris and Platt I hope you don't mind me jumping in your discussion. According to Pirsig capitalism, socialism as well as communism are "programs for intellectual control over society" (Lila p278)

dmb says:
I hope you don't mind me jumping into your jumping in to their discussion. When we add up all the key passages on this topic, I think the MOQ is basically suggesting that we take what's best from capitalism (that it's Dynamic) and what's best in socialism (that's it intellectual) and add them together. They each have a problem to be eliminated from the solution too. As he says here, capitalism is "less moral as far as static patterns go" (buying and selling of things is social level stuff). It's the freedom that makes it work, despite its less evolved status. The socialists represent the fourth level and that's what makes them morally superior "as far as static patterns go" but they "have inadvertantly closed the door to DQ". So it's pretty clear that the solution advocated by the MOQ would be an intellectually guided society that doesn't close the door to DQ.

More specifically, I think the problem with capitalism is that it gets confused or equated with intellectual level freedoms. The freedom to buy and sell things make economies grow but that isn't as important as the right to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, etc.. These two sets of values are not mutually exclusive, but history shows that exploitation and repression have gone hand in hand with all traditional economic systems, including capitalism. Slavery was already an old institution when the Babylonians started using it. We've made progress of course. Now most slaves wear their chains on the inside. 

The debates over the causes of the recent economic meltdown gets at this, I think. If the demand for oversight, transparency and accountability were added to the various civil rights provisions, workplace safety laws and such and all that was enforced consistently we'd be getting closer to that MOQ ideal. It's not a very far off ideal. Lots of people are already pushing for these kinds of changes. It's probably accurate enough to simply call this a mixed economy but the MOQ's diagnosis could be used to mix and blend these elements for a more coherent set of reasons. This is a diagnosis of and solution for what's been happening on the ground, so to speak, not a Utopian scheme.

Thanks.


> "The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes everybody richer-by
> preventing static economic patterns from setting in and stagnating economic
> growth. That is the reason the major capitalist economies of the world have
> done so much better since World War II than the major socialist economies.
> It is not that Victorian social economic patterns are more moral than
> socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite. They are less
> moral as static patterns go. What makes the free-enterprise system superior
> is that the socialists, reasoning intelligently and objectively, have
> inadvertently closed the door to Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling
> of things. They closed it because the metaphysical structure of their
> objectivity never told them Dynamic Quality exists." (Lila, 17)
> 
> Having said this, Pirsig goes on to argue ( pp 281-2) that "...the
> intellectual pattern that has been appointed to take over society, *has a
> defect in it"  *(my emphasis) because it has no provision for morals.
> 
> Any"pattern" that allows for/is open to Dynamic Quality is absolutely
> superior to a pattern that doesn't but DQ left unchecked (unlatched?)
> degenerates these self same patterns. It involutes...twists in upon itself.
> This (very roughly) is what is happening to capitalism as a pattern of value
> (just follow the periodic "boom and bust" cycles.
> In socialism, as a program for intellectual control over society although
> Pirsig considers it of a higher moral standing, this same pattern still has
> the same defect in it on top of the omission of DQ.
> And as I mentioned in an earlier contribution this can be seen and felt
> everywhere. "The Party" decides what has value and where the priorities are
> and it makes sure that this is enforced at all levels of patterns...(even in
> the bedroom!).
> I do not want to sound too naive but since being here I have learnt to value
> "freedom" as a fantastic social/intellectual achievement.
> It is a shame that so many people (in the West) do not realise the magnitude
> of this achievement.
> 
> Regards Andre
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