From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 23:43:45 BST
Hi Platt,
> > Well,
> > it rules at the intellectual level too, manipulating intellectual ideas
> > to foster its growth, but it mainly rules by means of intellectual
> > ideas.
>
>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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
> > 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.
> > 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. 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.
> > 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?
Johnny
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