Thanks everyone for noticing my introduction, This well be my first real post on:
-------The Metaphysics of Cities, Societies and the Stock Market.---------
Throughout Chapter 17 and 18 Robert Pirsig talks about Cities as being a higher evolutionary being and how they are like Giants using humans as resources as we use farm animals as resources.
RMP: "A social pattern is a higher form of evolution."
I found chapter 17 as being one of the most interesting part of the book. I myself have some worries about the urbanization of society. Pirsig talks about the craziness of New York and how people are different over there. The City has made them scared of interacting with anyone they don't know. A quote that has been repeated through both of Pirsig's book was how the look and then ignore syndrome was present in the Western parts of America and in New York alike.
RMP in ZMM: "Once in a while one gives a quick glance and then looks away expressionlessly........as if embarrassed that we might have noticed he was looking at us"
again a similar quote was repeating in LILA: "A woman coming toward him hasn't clicked yet, that quick New York dart-of-the-eyes, but she will....Here it comes.....Click!...Then looks away....She passes by.....Like the click of a candid-camera shutter.."
I have seen this happen in other cities to and I think I know why it occurs. This kind of thing doesn't happen in small towns (although I have been a city folk for all my life). This occurs because people in cities are afraid of making contact with people outside there own small sub-society. A sub-society is a person's group of friends, teachers, family and other people they have meet and have got to know. In cities it is impossible to have a sub-society that includes everyone in the city so anyone outside people's sub-society are presumed as being dangerous unless found otherwise. In small towns I think people can avoid this timidness. They can get to know most of the locals therefore expanding there sub-society into a community which is a major thing missing in city life.
My philosophy is that I can not understand how people can become friends with there sub-society, through school, higher-learning and social events. But are to scared to become friends with anyone outside there sub-society. The mass quantity of numbers in cities could be the problem or maybe the television news has made people suspect other people as being thugs, murderers and some how dangerous people.
Pirsig used a metaphor to show the super organism cities. The metaphor was a Giant. He talks about how scientist where being corrupted in the late 1940s by being offered jobs to make profit rather then finding the truth. (The still happens all the time). In some ways I feel that the Share Market is the same. It is its own entity by itself. Humans no longer control the Share Market and they never will. It is a rather big monster that we defenseless humans can not control, instead it controls us. It tells us when to invest and when to sell. It controls the job market. It controls recession, depressions and booms.
Thank you for reading this post. I hope you all understand it and I am looking forward to discussing this subject further.
Geoffrey Balasoglou
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