From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Fri Nov 11 2005 - 14:52:18 GMT
Gonna try to consolidate things a bit.
Pirsig doesn't mention the defect in production and consumption in Lila. Why
should he? He just spent an entire book on it with ZMM, where he sees the
problem and proposes solutions. In Lila, he explores the causality. I don't
take that to mean he "changed his mind", I see no recanting or correcting as he
would likely have done to avoid confusion. What I see is that between ZMM and
Lila there were an aweful lot of things to talk about.
As for the paragraph where Pirsig says mass production was a Victorian
invention, I remind you Pirsig said this about the Victorians. "For them the
pose was quality. Quality was the social corset, the ornamental cast iron. It
was a "quality" of manners and egotism and suppression of human decency. When
Victorians were being moral, kindness wasn't anywhere in sight." And also,
"From their curlicued shapes he guessed they were made of ornamental cast iron.
Something about them seemed to convey the mood of the whole place. Brittle,
cold, and uncomfortable. That was the Victorian spirit: a whole attitude toward
life."
But again, of course, the whole argument is not an abandonment of the present
for a retreat to the past. The first thing Pirsig says in ZMM is that the
Buddha can rest quite comfortably in the gears of a motorcycle. He is not
calling for an abandonment of production in ZMM, but for an expansion of what
it means to unite Quality with both production and consumption.
Did "mass production" bring us good stuff. Certainly. But when guided by amoral
SOM that strips Quality from both the producing and consumption of goods, you
get the central thesis to ZMM.
I mentioned putting people before profits, and you repsonded that business needs
profits, and I chuckled because no where did I say abandon all desire for
profits. But there has to be a point where consideration for people outweighs
an extra dollar or two in profits or savings.
You quoted Pirsig in the afforemented paragraph saying... "[the Victorian] codes
of craftsmanship and labor and thrift and self-discipline that really built
twentieth-century America." I find this hopelessly naive. Open any history
book, and look at the pictures of work in the factories, and read the
first-hand descriptions of the conditions of labor, and you won't find one ioto
of a "code of craftsmanship". Here Pirsig is guilty of seeing history through
the eyes of the wealthy Victorians, in their mansions, so full of wealth "they
could give their money away". Thankfully, Pirsig says this earlier about the
Victorians, "Victorians in America, she explained, were nouveau fiche who had
no guidelines for what to do with all their sudden wealth and growth. What was
depressing about them was their ugly gracelessness: the gracelessness of
someone who has outgrown his own codes of selfregulation. They didn't know how
to relate to money. That was the problem. It was partly the new post-Civil War
industrial revolution. Fortunes were being made in steel, lumber, cattle,
machinery, railroads, and land. Everywhere one looked new innovations were
creating fortunes where there was nothing before. Cheap labor was pouring in
from Europe. No income taxes and no social codes really forced a sharing of the
wealth. After scrambling for their lives to get it, they couldn't just give it
away. And so the whole thing became involuted." Involuted. Yes, like Pirsig I
like that word.
[Platt]
I don't recall the many ways Pirsig suggested to bring value back into the
relationship between labor and what they build.
[Arlo]
Re-read ZMM. It's all in there. From identifying with the materials of one's
production, to a power over the production cycle, just follow his many examples
of the mechanic and rotisserie assembly.
[Platt]
Yes, indeed I am. Can there be a new language without new words? If so,
perhaps you can demonstrate with a few examples.
[Arlo]
"Quality". What is meant before ZMM. What it means after. There are no new words
in ZMM, but a whole new way of thinking and talking.
[Platt]
All you've given us in support of your argument are a few paragraphs from
ZMM. At least I cite a whole chapter from Lila about the central crises of
modern life--the inability of amoral intellect to support society in its
efforts to keep biological patterns at bay -- as witness "intellectual"
France.
[Arlo]
I've given you more than that. Anyone's who's read the book knows the many
citations I've provided from ZMM are taken from throughout the entire book, and
that they are representative of the full text.
[Platt]
His emphasis on the classical-romantic split. Changed in Lila to static-
Dynamic, the basis of a whole new worldview.
[Arlo]
Fair enough.
[Arlo previously]
Nope. The concern for self was the biological level of self-preservation.
In the social level, community value was placed higher than individual
value. You're right though, the Intellectual level, with no ability to side with
the social level, sided unanimously with the biological. What it
should have done is see which self-preservation values it should uphold
(such as free speech), and which social values it should uphold (such as
people over profits).
[Platt]
Nope. In early evolution of man, there was no self. The tribe was all.
Why? Simple. Survival depended on tribal acceptance. The social level was
a human invention necessary for survival.
[Arlo]
Nope, the "self" was what came before the tribe. A bunch of wonderful, isolated
"indivuduals" running around the prairies and grasslands and hills, spending
the entirety of the lives devoted to "self-preservation", where "they" were
more important than anyone else. The tribe, social patterns that alleviated
isolated man's biological prison of isolation, and brought great new
social-level freedoms, focused on the preservation of the tribe over any single
biological individual. Intellect, in its abandonment of all kinds of support
for social patterns, has reverted man to the "isolated individual", except this
time its wholly fictional because no one is "isolated" when one grows up in a
social-cultural system of supports, affordances, and freedoms. Intellect, was
right, of course, to challenge the social level when repressed freedoms
threatened the Intellectual level (such as free speech, trial by jury, etc.),
but as Pirsig noted went too far in its unconditional condemnation of society,
such as the "right to wealth" at the expense of the community.
[Arlo previously]
As we've both been saying. I'm just saying that to think that this "amoral
SOM, the dominant intellectual pattern" had no ill effects in production
and consumption is naive. Pirsig certainly felt it does.
[Platt]
If that's Pirsig's main message, then I'll move on to somebody who has
something new to say. Fortunately, I won't have to. His main message is
about understanding the way the world works due to conflicts between moral
levels, and the inability of intellect, dominated as it is by the science
model, to teach us anything about morals, values, ethics or beauty,
resulting in crises like we now see in France..
[Arlo]
Pirsig's "main message" is about a paradigm shift that sees Quality as coming
before subjects and objects. In ZMM this message was clear in how the old
paradigm impacted the modes of production and consumption. In Lila he offers a
metaphysical hierarchy (but one which even he denies is "absolute truth") as a
way of looking at the world. To me, the Quality message is more important, no
matter how briliant the MOQ, it is still only "an analogy".
Arlo
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