Hello everyone I want to talk a little tonight about "the system." I'm pretty much apolitical. Oh sure, I follow the candidates online and I vote when elections roll around. But I find I don't get involved beyond that. I've never thought of running for public office. There's of course a nagging doubt at the back of my mind that if I did run for county dog catcher or some such office no one would vote for me, but there's more than that; after all, I'd surely get my own vote. I found these passages while re-reading ZMM and thought them perhaps pertinent to this discussion:
"To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as "the system" is to speak correctly, since these organizations are founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle. They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. 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." (ZMM) Last week I went to get my drivers license renewed as I must every 4 years. I dread it. The waiting. The snooty bitch behind the counter calling out numbers like she's handing out hundred dollar bills. Waiting. Watching little hand on the clock go round and round. It came to me sitting there this time that those poor people that work at these dreary government jobs must feel like that every day. Imagine. Going to work every day and dealing with knuckleheads and dingbats give you shit because you took too long getting to them. Watching that little hand on the clock go round and round until you could finally leave... It's the system. It doesn't care about anyone. It eats people morning, noon, and night. Who's up to changing a monster like that? Not me. Not anyone. That's why it just keeps on keeping on. And every 4 years I line up with all the other knuckleheads and let the system fuck with me. I don't know what else to do. That's how the system works. The meaninglessness of it, the inhumanity to humanity, is built right in to ensure everyone complies with its rules. Every once in a while someone comes along and shouts about revolution and change but nothing ever changes. Why? "But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. 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." [ZMM] When we begin to see the background of the system, then real change becomes a possibility. The only way to change is by attacking the effects of the system, not by attacking the system itself. That's what all the crazy-haired revolutionaries of history never understood. They'd overthrow a government and proclaim a new day but the peasants always knew... nothing changed. Money still flowed uphill, and shit flowed down. But what does it mean to attack the effects of the system? First, it seems difficult to impossible to attack from outside the system. In order to attack the effects of the system, the adversary needs to be inside, to become a part of the system. The problem arises though when one becomes part of the system. Depending on the strength of the person attacking the effects of the system, they are overwhelmed sooner or later by the sheer magnitude of the edifice in place, of the vast and omnipotent social level. This in turn may be considered the birth of the intellectual level, born to do battle with a seemingly insurmountable enemy, civilization itself. The early Greeks fought tempestuous battles with the intellectual giants of its day, and won, throwing the world into a long, drawn out dark age that only ended when the light of intellect once again began to shine on the Church. Not from outside the Church, but from inside! The longing for the truth of reason finally overthrew the centuries of dogma that kept 99% of the population in the world in darkness and disease. The Church of Reason overcame the Church of an Angry and Jealous God. "That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There's no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone's mind -- number three tappet is right on too. One more to go. This had better be it -- .I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this...that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes...pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts...all of them fixed and inviolable, and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forge work or welding sees "steel" as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all out of someone's mind. That's important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there. But what's "potential"? That's also in someone's mind! -- Ghosts." [ZMM] This is a great metaphor! If a person looks at the government as a system of concepts worked out in people, like a motorcycle is a system of concepts worked out in steel, a totally new perspective of government arises. There's no part of government that hasn't been worked out in someone's mind. To understand the system, to attack the effects of the system, it's important to see that the people are only shaped by someone's mind. There is no "government worker" in nature. Nature only has a potential for "government worker." And as Robert Pirsig tells us, potential is also in someone's mind. "Ghosts." The whole system is nothing but ghosts. When they talk about "ghosts in the machine" that's what they mean. "This morning I talked about hierarchies of thought...the system. Now I want to talk about methods of finding one's way through these hierarchies...logic. "Two kinds of logic are used, inductive and deductive. Inductive inferences start with observations of the machine and arrive at general conclusions. For example, if the cycle goes over a bump and the engine misfires, and then goes over another bump and the engine misfires, and then goes over another bump and the engine misfires, and then goes over a long smooth stretch of road and there is no misfiring, and then goes over a fourth bump and the engine misfires again, one can logically conclude that the misfiring is caused by the bumps. That is induction: reasoning from particular experiences to general truths. "Deductive inferences do the reverse. They start with general knowledge and predict a specific observation. For example, if, from reading the hierarchy of facts about the machine, the mechanic knows the horn of the cycle is powered exclusively by electricity from the battery, then he can logically infer that if the battery is dead the horn will not work. That is deduction. "Solution of problems too complicated for common sense to solve is achieved by long strings of mixed inductive and deductive inferences that weave back and forth between the observed machine and the mental hierarchy of the machine found in the manuals. The correct program for this interweaving is formalized as scientific method." [ZMM] Let's look at today's political scene... we have a new President here in the US, one who is promising change and ran for President by professing to have an audacity for hope. So far, his agenda seems as ambitious and far-reaching as any President in my lifetime. He is ending a war, attempting to build a national health care system, renewing international ties by sending out his former opponent turned ally into the world with a message of hope, and reforming business institutions entrenched in a recession all at the same time. But will it succeed? By using Mr Pirsig's motorcycle metaphor, it becomes more clear how to attack the effects of the system in order to change the system. The economy went over a couple bumps and is misfiring. It seems logical to conclude that by fixing the bumps the misfiring will be fixed as well. Our new President, however, has deemed it necessary to fix the machine itself rather than fixing the bumps. This entails changing the mind-set of "government workers" like that old gal in the drivers license facility who'd rather be anywhere than there. It's not going to be easy. But if he succeeds, President Obama will leave a legacy far surpassing fixing a few bumps in the road. There's always going to be more bumps. By fixing the machine though, those bumps become inconsequential and merely an annoyance rather than an impediment to civilization itself. I'm impressed enough to be thinking of running for some type of office myself, not for self-aggrandizement (although the pension would be nice), but to serve the machine in order to attack the effects from inside. Thoughts? Thanks for reading, Dan PS I've been buying gold since it was under $300 an ounce and haven't stopped yet. Fiat money sucks... gold rocks. _________________________________________________________________ Express your personality in color! Preview and select themes for Hotmail®. http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/LearnMore/personalize.aspx?ocid=TXT_MSGTX_WL_HM_express_032009#colortheme Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
