From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jun 23 2004 - 03:58:29 BST
Hey all,
"The best things in life are free, but don't tell that to the birds and
bees..."
General consensus from the first few posts is that money itself is a social
pattern
of some kind (which seems obvious enough). Pirsig himself had this to
offer...
PIRSIG (Letter to Bo, posted on the MOQ.ORG forum)
..[The] idea that quality is some sort of vapid, romantic, ethereal
illusion may be dispelled in part by a discussion of plain old money which,
in the MOQ, is a pure and simple index of social quality.
R
While I think I know what he's saying, I believe Pirsig has misspoke. Where
he says that money is an 'index of social quality', I believe what he meant
to say was that money is a 'social index of quality'.
The difference is that if money was an "index of social quality" it would
mean that we can tell how much social quality something has by how much
money it's worth, while if money is a "social index of quality" it would
mean that the amount of money something is worth is an indicator of how much
society values it. Pirsig said the former, but I think he meant to say the
latter. As Amilcar eloquently put it...
AMILCAR
.. money is a static icon of the dynamic assessment of value. I give you
money not for an item or thing, but for the worth and value that i ascribe
to it.
R
That being said, I think I agree with him (or agree with that anyway).
Money is a social pattern that can indicate to us how much a given society
(or group or individual) values certain patterns. American society values
oil, so it's very valuable here. A tribe of Aboriginal Australians
probably wouldn't pay much for it though since they have no cars (i'm
actually not sure if that's true, but you get the idea). All of this, of
course, is just a very long way of saying that money is valuable because it
can get us many of things we value (although obviously not all..."Can't buy
me Luuuhhhhhh-uuuuuuuve!") and so we can tell a great deal about things
people value by looking at how they spend their money. Just like in a
high-school economics textbook.
PI
The question becomes much more interesting when we look at
the relation of money with the individual....
I try to do good work. I try not to let things such as money, time or
other low quality stuff get in the way. I try to keep gumption very high.
When I have to deal with low quality things such as money, I give them the
attention they deserve, but nothing more. I never let them be more
important than the actual intellectual work I am doing.
R
Right Pi. In much the same way that we can deduce some of things a society
values by looking at what they'll pay for various things, we can also deduce
the values of the individual by looking at what he spends his money on.
Though, as you point out about yourself, this only holds insofar as we are
talking about people who value things that money can buy. You value
intellectual pursuits and money cannot buy intellectual prowess (although it
can buy books, lessons, and a trip to Greece to experience the Parthenon
first hand).
JAAP
Money can also be regarded as a mechanism provided by the social level
to provide the biological needs. Without money no food, shelter etc.
This hooks into some of the most elemental fears of the biological
human: to starve. People feel save when they have money, they feel
unprotected when they don't. It takes a lot of courage (or foolishness)
to go without money....
Maybe money can be described as a mechanism employed by the social
level to suppress some elements of the biological level ?
R
I think it can Jaap, at least to a certain extent, except instead of saying
that money is employed by the social level to suppress the some elements of
the biological level, I would rather phrase it more like... Money is
employed by the social level to liberate members of society from some
elements of the social. You don't have to hunt and fish and build your own
house anymore. Now you just have to get money and you can go to the
supermarket for food and Century21 for shelter (although I think it is
arguable that this is actually a case of a newer social pattern liberating
an older social pattern, rather than a case of a social pattern liberating
biological patterns).
Of course, it's a double-edged sword, in liberating members of society from
those biological elements, money entangles those same people in a whole new
host problems since now you need money (ie. instead of looking for food, we
look for jobs, instead of building shelters, we build resumes). Enslaved by
the liberator. I think this is what David M. meant when said....
DAVID M.
It seems clear that our current society makes it difficult to dedicate
yourself to these higher values, even obstructive in fact.
R
While money may have liberated us from certain aspects of the biological
level, nothing in the intellectual level (that I know of at least) has yet
been able to liberate from the particular aspect of the social level that is
money. Moreover, I can't imagine any intellectual pattern ever will. We
will always need many of the things that are now only available if you have
money. As Marsha said...
MARSHA
On the necessities, I try to determine what exactly is necessary. I have
food and a place to live, and I am grateful. Other than that, I ask what
do I really need? (I have a big addiction to books.) But how I would
behave if I lost my food and home, I really wonder.
R
Well, that addiction to books would dry out real fast. That's for sure.
NATHAN
No one needs to be convinced that money is valuable. The question however
is why do those you have more than enough still strive for more.
I ask because I see the striving for money as a demented exercise and yet
I seem not to be able to break from this insanity.
If there was a person who collected cans of corn and had warehouses full
of cases of corn and still wanted more to save 'for a rainy day', he would
be seen as mentally deranged yet a person can be motivated to collect money
without limit and he is not seen as abnormal, indeed, he might be admired.
R
People with lots of money are often admired for the simple reason that we
tend to admire anyone who does something that it is generally considered
difficult to do (ie. hitting a major-league fastball). Making oneself
wealthy is (i believe) generally considered to be a difficult task (that's
why it's called the "American dream" and not the "American guarantee".
Thus, we tend to admire those can pull it off. Plus, I think this is part
of the "celebrity-effect" which Pirsig discuss in LILA mainly following the
meeting with Redford. Rich people are often well known for their wealth and
so get many of the benefits of celebrity that Pirsig alludes to.
MATT
To get to the point of what I am trying to say, money , in todays society ,
has a primary function of increasing the influence of those who already
posess* it. If you have money, your actions are less limited, and your
influence is increased, due to that fact. If you lack money, than.....too
bad for you. right?
R
Your point is well taken (although I would hesitate to say that this is
money's "primary function"). But yes, money can buy you anything that money
can buy, and that's a lot of things, the best doctors, the best lawyers, the
biggest platforms from which to make one's view heard, etc. But the flip
side is that it is this very inequality that drives the dynamic engine of
capitalism (for better or worse). It is often only the desire to get those
benefits that only those with money can have that drives people to build
better mousetraps and provide better services. If you lack money,
then......you might think of a way to get some that could have a profound
dynamic influence. As DMB said....
DMB
I suppose the best a capitalist saint could hope for is to get very wealthy
by making the world better and then give it all away to improve the world
even further. Maybe some future Jill Gates will earn a trillion dollars by
developing toxic clean-up technology and she'll spend her vast fortune on
food, medicine, libraries, museums and such.
R
Mark said...
MARK
If money is... a social pattern, would it be possible to remove money
altogether for the basic (biological) necessities of life, and have these
needs freely distributed, thus removing want and hunger from society
altogether? This sounds moral in MOQ terms, but it may be argued that a
removal of much incentive would bleed DQ out of activity.
R
As stated earlier, I don't think any intellectual pattern will ever
completely liberate us from the need for money (and for the reason you
state, among others). Just as society couldn't liberate us from many
aspects of the biological, I don't think intellect can ever completely
liberate us from society. I take this to be one of things Pirsig means when
says that intellectual patterns are rooted in social patterns.
thanks for everyone's comments and thoughts.
take care,
rick
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