From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Oct 23 2005 - 11:52:37 BST
> [Platt on being a relativist]
> Pretty much so as regards products and services. As for morality, no.
>
> [Arlo]
> Why is morality not an aspect of products and services?
There's not a great moral issue on whether to buy Aquafresh or Crest
toothpaste.
> [Platt on the crisis described in ZMM]
> That's surface stuff. For the current culture crises caused by today's
> intellectuals, read Chapter 24 of Lila.
>
> [Arlo]
> A chapter versus an entire book. Hmm. But I don't disagree. Let me ask you
> this. If the crisis of Lila is the past 100 years of ammorality brought on
> by a SOM incapable of dealing with morals, why is production and
> consumption during this same period "immune" to this amorality?
So long as free choice remains in the marketplace, it tends to be self-
correcting from a moral standpoint. It's intellect's interference in the
marketplace (social level pattern) that's the problem with regulation
piled on regulation so that it's a wonder anything gets produced. Witness
today the shortage of oil refineries due to such intellectual
interference.
> That is, the "junk" of production and consumption is produced by the
> Intellectual amorality brought forth by the SOM. Has the "business world"
> in your opinion been unaffected, or is immune, to this? Pirsig didn't think
> so, and devoted an entire book to examining the fallout (in produciton and
> consumption) of the post-Industrial revolution (1900-present) amorality in
> production and consumption.
I didn't get the impression from ZMM that the whole book was about poor
products and services. My impression was it was about reality seen through
a classic or romantic lens..
> [Platt]
> As for taxes, we agree. As for back to the 1890, yes, people were more free
> from government interference then.
>
> [Arlo]
> And look at what world most people lived in. Hardly one I'd want to go back
> to. "Free from government interference", maybe, but enslaved by necessity
> and servitude.
Yes. Thanks to capitalism, technology and the free market, living
conditions for most people are much better today.
> [Arlo]
> Then who declared them "relative"? What about them makes them so? And other
> things "not"? And you avoided my question, are drug lords "enriching the
> culture" by virtue of their desired product and amount of sales? Is that a
> relative answer too?
>
> [Platt]
> Don't you think drugs should be legalized? I mean, don't we need more
> people hallucinating so they too can create a new metaphysics like Pirsig?
>
> [Arlo]
> We certainly could use more people having illuminating experiences like
> Pirsig did with the peyote, that led to the MOQ. But you avoided the
> question. Are drug lords enriching the culture? Is "enrichment" relative,
> like you seem to indicate?
Well, I guess to some they are. To me, no.
> [Platt]
> I know. You want to change human nature. Lotsa luck. I prefer to work with
> it, like the natural human desire to be free. .
>
> [Arlo]
> So, Pirsig defied human nature with his decision to author and publish
> outside of money and fame profit?
>
> Let me ask you straight-out, since you've avoid the question every other
> way. Was whatever motivated Pirsig unnatural or natural?
Unnatural in the sense that most people work to make money. I presume
Pirsig also needs money. I presume you do, too. Are you suggesting there's
something immoral about that?
[Platt]
> I don't see that Pirsig was out to "fix" the free market. He was out "fix"
> morality, rescuing it from the barren wasteland it has become due to SOM..
>
> [Arlo]
> And you are saying the "free market" is immune to the "barren wasteland" of
> SOM that effected everything else? Pirsig did not think so. Hence ZMM.
As I said, the free market is self-correcting in that products and
services not wanted don't survive. To you there may be a lot of junk on
the market that you wouldn't buy. Same for me. But to believe that somehow
you, or I or Pirsig ought to step in and eliminate what we consider to be
junk would be a step away from freedom -- the highest good in the MOQ.
Platt
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