Hi Dan,
I'm sure there will lots here who have something
to say about "the system". It's important but,,,
I'm still thinking about you howling at the moon.
Marsha
At 02:40 AM 3/2/2009, you wrote:
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.
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