[Platt quotes Pirsig]
"What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists..."
[Arlo]
Well, if that's your "proof" that capitalism "has
a provision for morals", then reason must too, since reason created capitalism.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. While "the
free market" keeps the door open to Dynamic
Quality, the "market" is only as good as the
underlying metaphysical base of the population.
An S/O culture produces and sustains an S/O market.
"... but he knows that buried within it are
grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the
manners that will convince themselves they
possess Quality, learning strange poses of style
and glamour vended by dream magazines and other
mass media, and paid for by the vendors of
substance. He thinks of them at night alone with
their advertised glamorous shoes and stockings
and underclothes off, staring through the sooty
windows at the grotesque shells revealed beyond
them, when the poses weaken and the truth creeps
in, the only truth that exists here, crying to
heaven, God, there is nothing here but dead neon and cement and brick." (ZMM)
"The city closes in on him now, and in his
strange perspective it becomes the antithesis of
what he believes. The citadel not of Quality, the
citadel of form and substance. Substance in the
form of steel sheets and girders, substance in
the form of concrete piers and roads, in the form
of brick, of asphalt, of auto parts, old radios,
and rails, dead carcasses of animals that once
grazed the prairies. Form and substance without Quality." (ZMM)
"Capitalism", like "science", is flawed by its
S/O underpinnings, flawed by its inability to
conceive of something more than either "profit".
As I pointed out many times in the past, this
leads to the type of alienation Marx wrote about.
"The creator of it feels no particular sense of
identity with it. The owner of it feels no
particular sense of identity with it. The user of
it feels no particular sense of identity with it.
Hence, by Phædrus' definition, it has no Quality." (ZMM)
"But the biggest clue seemed to be their
expressions. They were hard to explain.
Good-natured, friendly, easygoing...and
uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had
the feeling they had just wandered in there
themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench.
There was no identification with the job. No
saying, "I am a mechanic." At 5 P.M. or whenever
their eight hours were in, you knew they would
cut it off and not have another thought about
their work. They were already trying not to have
any thoughts about their work on the job. In
their own way they were achieving the same thing
John and Sylvia were, living with technology
without really having anything to do with it. Or
rather, they had something to do with it, but
their own selves were outside of it, detached,
removed. They were involved in it but not in such a way as to care." (ZMM)
As I said, this S/O alienation as the foundation
of "capitalism" has left us with a system that
sees human beings as "resources", commodities to
be bought and sold on the market with no
consideration towards anything but how they (as
resources) effect "profit". While GM execs give
themselves millions in bonuses, they lay off
thousands of workers. And the reason for this is
that the same S/O mentality that underscores
"reason" also underscores "reason's child"- capitalism.
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