Hi all,
I've noticed this email server lags a little, sometimes i get replies before
the original message, and this will get to you probably before the last
(long) message i sent. oh well.
I read alot of the posts and i just have some comments. First, no one needs
to give up specialization. well, in some sense they will. to paraphrase an
author whom i've forgot: in modern society i can be a chef, a hunter, a
philosopher or a variety of other things. But in my life, i am a chef when
i wake in the morning, a hunter in the afternoon and a philosopher in the
evening.
Rather than being your occupation (as so many children aspire to), we may do
it as just something we love. Matematicians have plenty of time to
specialize in matematics, cleaning windows doesnt take very long, and they
do it anyway in this society.
Also, about doing what you love and getting paid for it: no ones getting
paid. Its ludicrious to think someone would give me money to do what i
want, because the person paying me has different ideas. If i want to get
paid (unless i am the originator of the buissness), i need to what others
want, what others are willing to pay me for. my responibility is to their
ideals, not my own. If however we drop the notion of money (which seriously
complicates people pursuing their personal projects as Rog has pointed out
several times when he thought he was critisizing MY idea but actually an
idea no one mentioned), then i may do what is of Quality, which has
convieniently been set up in such away that i am pleasing myself and others
at the same time. Matematicians love to theorize and i love tohear their
theories. Shoemakers love to make high Quality shoes, i love to wear them.
Your current matematician however is pursuing an arbitrary goal for the
governemnt or something in order to get paid, and your shoemakes is turning
nobs in a factory having sexual fantasies rather than pursuing the orgins of
the Quality event, losing himslef to Quality, Gaining peace of mind.
Musicians get to make music, which they love, but most subordinate their
creative impulses to writting jingles for commercials or playing in bands
for pop stars (making atrociously bad music). They get to follow their
dream but must modify it to fit the market. Without a market, we could have
many more original a creative bands becuase no one would have to make
pop-music or commericals.
I never postulated payment or a Market, these things are Rog's ideals, not
mine.
Also, complete support of a market system requires that we assume people
already are pursuing Quality, which they are not. The technological
imperative, comodification and false needs need to be addressed. I like
having Quality things, granted. But the idea that things make life easier,
better, more fulfilling is something that pervades most of society. Life
does not get easier, we exsist in samsara, there is suffering in this world.
No material object will fix my heart when my beloved leaves me, when my
father dies, when the world swallows me up with sorrow. Yet, its easy to
work a second rate job, one along the lines of your passion but modified for
the market, so that one may afford comfortable shoes and spreadable jelly.
despite its ease, it brings neither true joy nor does it prepare us for the
suffering of the world. Having a good pair of shoes makes me happier, but
it is nothing compared to letting the subject/object divide vanish into
overwhelming Quality.
The pursuit of technological progress has become the fulfilling of false
needs, it makes lifes trifles easier, its true hardships unforseen. Pirsig
notices the irrationality of this rational society in the end of lila. I
illustarte it in the first couple paragraphs of my essay. lets address it
rather than say, well, the material suffering of the past has been overcome,
there is nothing else to do, lets make life as lazy a pursuit as possible.
we march on, uncritically, proclaiming our system superior, denying the
possiblity of greater freedom.
Elliot
PS- please strive for a bigginers mind in this conversation, feel free to
drop your old ideas because im not talking about economics or a market.
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