From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Nov 07 2005 - 00:16:44 GMT
Arlo and all MOQers:
Arlo quoted ZAMM:
>"technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort
>to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don’t know
>where to start because no one has ever told them there’s such a thing as
>Quality in this world and it’s real, not style."
dmb says:
In Lila, Pirsig points out that neither socialists nor capitalists have a
clue about Quality. I mean, this is not just from ZAMM. Its not something
left behind or abandoned, despite what Platt says. I ran across this same
idea the other day when I was looking at William Barrett's IRRATIONAL MAN.
(I was checking to see if the existentialist notion of "nothingness" had
anything to do with the mystics notion of no-thing-ness. It seems they are
not at all related.) Anyway, I thought I'd quote Barrett on this issue.
"...the capitalist emerges from feudal society as the enterprising and
calculating mind who must organize production rationally to show a favorable
balance of profits over costs. Where feudalism is concrete and organic, with
man dominated by the image of the land, captialism is abstact and
calculating in spirit, and severs man from the earth. In capitalism,
everything follows from this necessity of rationality organizing economic
enterprise in the interests of efficiency: the collectivization of labor in
factories and the susequent subdivision of human function; the accumulation
of masses of the population in cities, with the inevitable increase in the
technical control of life that this makes necessary; and the attempt
rationally to control public demand by elaborate and fantastic advertising,
mass pressure, and even planned sociological research. The process of
rationalizing economic enterprise thus knows no limits and comes to cover
the whole of society's life. That capitalism has given way in our time, over
large areas of the earth, to a form of total collectivization that has been
taken over by the State does not alter the fundmental human issues involved.
The collectivization becomes all the more drastic when a mystique of the
State, backed by brutal regimentation by the police, is added to it.
Collectivized man, whether communist or capitalist, is still only an abstact
fragment of man."
Arlo quoted ZAMM:
>"The true system, the real system, is our present construction of
>systematic
>thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the
>rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will
>simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic
>government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that
>government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in
>the
>succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little
>understanding."
dmb says:
I think its hilarious that the flag-wavers love to attack this or that
feature of the system while praising and defending other aspects of that
very same system. These are people who express admiration for Henry Ford and
hatred for Hitler without realizing that Hitler and Ford loved each other as
much as they both hated jews or that the "Wolks Vagon" was Germany's answer
to the model-T or that American companies profited from slave labor during
WW2. I mean, when are the reactionary cranks going to realize that
capitalism and communist are just two rival forms of materialism in the
worst sense of the word? And if you asked Mussolini, the inventor of
fascism, to define fascism, he'd tell you that it should really be called
corporatism because it is essentially a form of government that's run by
corporations. With that in mind, the idea that freedom is all about "free
markets" becomes quite absurd. The system. So much talk, so little
understanding.
Arlo quoted ZAMM:
>"People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from
>eight to
>five without question because the structure demands that it be that way.
>There’s no villain, no "mean guy" who wants them to live meaningless lives,
>it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing
>to
>take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is
>meaningless."
dmb says:
As a guy from Detroit who used to be a cook at McDonalds, I can relate to
this sense of meaninglessness. I ran from the place as fast as I could.
There is no escape, but Colorado is much, much better than that shit-hole
factory town, which also happens to be one of the wealthiest AND most crime
ridden places on earth. When I was growing up, they told me that Oakland
County (suburban Detroit) had the highest per capita income in the world
even while the city itself was known as the murder capital of the world.
Somehow, I don't think that is just a co-incidence. Somehow, the rationality
that built those factories is the same one that produced so many murderers.
Its all part of the same package.
Arlo quoted ZAMM:
>"The real ugliness lies in the relationship between the people who produce
>the technology and the things they produce, which results in a similar
>relationship between the people who use the technology and the things they
>use."
dmb says:
Just this morning I heard a news story about the increasing popularity of
hand-crafted pizza. The chains, they said, couldn't compete because it was
too "labor intensive", by which I guess they really mean the chains can't
compete because they are set up on the factory model where efficiency
matters more than quality and the workers don't give a shit about the food
they're putting out or, apparently, the customers who will be eating it. And
you can't really blame them. They're not paid to care. They don't have the
time to care and they're only paid to preform a task efficiently. Its nearly
impossible to take pride in assembling, um, I mean cooking a Big Mac.
Billions are served, and yet it isn't any good.
Also from my youth, there was a little mom & pop place called "Olga's
Kitchen". It was so good that I was kind of amazed, went there every chance
I got and never forgot about it. Years later it became a chain. I was
psyched when I spotted one in a shopping mall. It had the same name, same
menu, same everything as before, except for one little thing; it wasn't any
good. I even went back to the original location and it had lost its quality
too.
dmb
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