From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Jun 28 2003 - 14:32:40 BST
Hi Johnny,
J:
> > > Well,
> > > it rules at the intellectual level too, manipulating intellectual ideas
> > > to foster its growth, but it mainly rules by means of intellectual
> > > ideas.
P:
> >I'm not sure about this. Can you give some examples of just how the Giant
> >uses intellect to rule? The only clearly intellectual attempt to control
> >society that I know of was Communism (and early New Dealism). Both were
> >utter failures.
J:
> I see the giant as the economy, as the media, as technological growth and
> dominance. It is the marketplace that is not controlled by anyone.
Free markets are praised by Pirsig because they allow for responses to DQ.
The Giant is the "cohesive force that held all these systems (of a big
city) together." The Giant is not the same as the marketplace. It's the
value pattern that integrates and the maintains the physical
infrastructure of a society by using the biological energy of human
bodies.
> Its
> grip on people's lives are intellectual ideas like everyone ought to have
> access to the latest information, gadgets, and health care, and for
> everyone to contribute to the economy, to bringing about the future. The
> intellectual idea that "the child's best interest" is more important than
> family bonds helps the giant, as does the intellectual idea that we are to
> self-actualize ourselves as individuals somehow, that we would be bored if
> were not achieving a career and advancing technology.
What you're describing is "consumerism," an anti-capitalists ideology.
Pirsig describes the Giant this way:
"When societies and cultures and cities are seen not as inventions of
'man' but as higher organisms than biological man, the phenomena of war
and genocide and all the other forms of human exploitation become more
intelligible. 'Mankind' has never been interested in getting itself
killed. But the superorganism, the Giant, who is a pattern of values
superimposed on top of biological human bodies, doesn't mind losing a few
bodies to protect his greater interests." (17)
> The Giant wants us
> to work for it, and is against us taking Sunday off to rest and single
> income families, it hates families and nepotism, which are inefficient
> burdens on its growth and subversive to it. These desires are stirred in
> us by Giant itself, through its marketplace and magazines.
Again, you associate the Giant with consumerism. The Giant is the
hidden patterns of values that holds a culture together using biological energy
just as a hidden pattern of values holds a glass of water together using physical
energy. Many people know about the "hidden hand" of free market economics.
But few people have ever heard of the hidden hand of the Giant.
> This reminds me of the current backlash by liberals against the charge that
> the media is liberal. They point to Fox News and other overtly patriotic
> stations, and defend CNN as fair, but it isn't the news that people mean
> when they say the media is liberal, it is the whole thing, media itself.
> Its movies and books and advertisements all, by necessity, tap into
> people's dissatisfaction and get people (inspire them) to want to change
> things. Conservatives in the truest sense (if there were such people)
> wouldn't have media at all, there'd be no need for Maybeline or Moby Dick
> or even the Bible, they'd be too busy trying to live life.
Well, I for one do not want to return to cave dwelling and a life of just
trying to live.
> > > I don't see how you can say that the USA has more protection
> > > against the Giant when clearly, the Giant thrives in the USA's free
> > > intellectual patterns. New York City is where the Giant was loudest,
> > > right?
> >
> >No. The Giant is loud in all large cities and in every nation. Where it's
> >loudest is in countries where individual rights are unheard of.
>
> Like say Cuba? I don't think Pirsig means to equate the Giant with
> totalitarianism. That has its own name already. He heard the Giant in
> NYC.
The Giant's power is that of totalitarianism, "devouring human bodies."
> > > Perhaps because people in the USA (and other technologically
> > > servient nations) seem to be the ones controlling the Giant most, as
> > > opposed to merely reacting to it, you think they are protected from its
> > > appitites.
> >
> >No. In the USA individuals are protected from the Giant's appetites by a
> >Constitution that guarantees certain inalienable rights to individuals--
> >life, liberty, property.
>
> You really need to explain why the Giant is so loud here then. The most
> dynamic city on earth, with the most freedom and liberty.
Again, that's capitalism, the free market. Not the Giant.
>The Giant needs
> us to be free, it can't have us sitting with our family huddled around the
> fireplace waiting for sunup to finish the harvest. It needs us pursuing
> property and making the most of our liberty and life, without any social
> contraints, serving ouselves, and by extension, serving it.
The Giant need us to be subservient to its needs and could care less how
we go about our individual lives.
> > > But getting rich off of it doesn't mean you aren't a slave
> > > to it, or you aren't manipulated by it.
> >
> >That's the socialist idea that capitalism makes everyone a slave to the
> >marketplace, a bogus notion if there ever was one.
>
> Are you admitting that there are bogus ideas?
Sure. Do you think all ideas are legitimate?
Platt
> Johnny
>
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