From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Sat Oct 15 2005 - 17:20:04 BST
[Arlo previously]
Before I go further into this, I want to put back upfront my original
question. If "the point of a book like [ZMM]" was not profit (either
financial or symbolic), and yet writing it "seemed to have a higher quality than
not writing it", what was the nature of that quality?
[Platt]
I think you have to ask Pirsig. Remember that the "nature of quality" for
each person is influenced by his life experiences.
[Arlo]
Then why do you push the profit-motive as something intrinsic to all labor
motivations? The point is that many may be, and are, guided by something
greater than wealth or fame. And yet that's all we hear about. Why not talk
openly about "enriching the social and Intellectual levels" (which was likely
Pirsig's motive) as a strong, positive goal in one's life. Why play the game
that without "profit" no one would do anything. It's quite obvious that we
would.
[Platt]
"Foregrounding?" That's a new one on me. Did you invent it?
[Arlo]
Here's a link to dictionary.com
(http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=foregrounding)
[Platt]
One's job, after all, is not the end all and be all of life's quality.
[Arlo]
Interesting sentiment. When you're working 50-60 hours a week to make ends meet,
how is that not a HUGE factor in your life's quality? Should we be content with
a few hours on the weekend to do something meaningful?
[Platt]
Why do you consider retail clerks and cashiers of lesser value than
entrepreneurs and small business owners?
[Arlo]
I don't consider "them" lesser value (what a strange thing to say)]. I consider
the jobs "lesser quality" because the are (1) creating wealth for distant
corporations while receiving only minimum wage, and (2) they have no
identification or personal investiture in how they labor.
A shop owner is certainly hard, labor intensive work. But its "mine", its not to
make someone else wealthy, it matters to "me". I identify with it. I am stunned
that a self-professed conservative would even say such as thing. I thought the
whole "entrepreneurial class" was foundational to your party's platform? Is
Bush now professing we'd be better off abandoning owning our own small
businesses and becoming clerks at Walmart?
[Platt]
As said above, what's quality for you isn't necessarily quality for me.
Personally I know some high quality retail clerks who have been extremely
helpful to me. Hardly "meaningless activity" as you describe it.
[Arlo]
What? Being "helpful to you" gives their labor "meaning"? When they go home at
the end of a long day, and open their paychecks with their accumulated minimum
wage pay, and realize they are spending the great majority of time enriching
someone else's bank account doing work that means nothing to them personally,
they'd stop and go, "But wait, I was helpful to that guy who bought a Panasonic
TV. My work does have meaning to me!"
[Platt]
Yes, I think they are stupid peons. But, unlike you who would like to
change people to be motivated by something other than profits or spend
their money on more "worthwhile" things, I'm for free markets, free
elections and free choices where individual decisions are given free
reign, unrestricted by those like you or me who think we "know better."
All I ask is that those who are free to make poor decisions be left alone
to suffer and learn from the consequences.
[Arlo]
Back to the gulag fear, eh? When you say "unlike you who would like to
change people to be motivated by something other than ...", I'm assuming you
really mean "unlike you *and Pirsig* who would like to change people to be
motivated by something other than ..." You see, Pirsig too felt that expanding
the dialogue would "change people", to see Quality, to appreciate craftsmanship
in labor, to endeavor to recognize the Buddha in the motorcycle, all things
people were NOT doing.
As for the "free market" tactic, which is old and tedious, but I'll answer the
charge again. I am no more against "free markets" than Pirsig. Pirsig did not
want to control the market, but felt that by enriching the dialogue, expanding
the dialogue, the market would naturally move towards Higher Quality. I feel
that way too. In materials production and politics.
"Freedom" is no less a Grail to me, I think we are mutually appreciative of
that. But, freedom is often constrained by an inadequate cultural dialogue, as
was the case Pirsig wrote about in ZMM. Certainly, Pirsig felt that people
should have the "freedom" to continue making junk, and consuming junk, but he
felt compelled to say the system could be "better". Not by restricting freedom,
but by expanding it by attempting to free it from a restrictive, maladious
dialogue.
Arlo
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