Way-out, Saturday party-time, plist-type open-ended question....grounded in Puritanism maybe?

[Matthew Cissell]

Too simple? As in simplisitc or over-simplified? I think not. "There are thousands of other considerations..." for what? You mean the fact that people are manipulated through advertising to kill themselves and their world? 
"We cannot accept the benefits of Big Business technologies without accepting the moral imperatives and the aesthetic forms that come with them." I'm not sure aobut the first part, maybe you can explain those moral imperatives a little bit more. I take the last part to mean I have to accept the package of the product and some other aesthic issues. I don't know if that's true. When consumers are offended by ads they can pressure the company to change them and the same goes with packaging. I agree that you can't have industrial producition without some of the conflict involved and that we must respond to that in the way we see fit. Maybe that's what you meant about moral imperatives.

And as for those two obvious things... Wow, Alice, you surprise me. Do you really think that someone in a grey suit is concerned about somebody having more free time or an esier life? let me deal with these.

"Big B.... made life easier for those..." Let me attend to that first. Ok so now my grandmother doesn't have to hand wash, great. but what happens? alnog wiht the growth that allows poor folk like my grandparents to buy these products it also allowed them to buy more clothes, which meant more washing. Washing the clothing now takes less time but there is more to do. My gradma cleaned all day when she was young and the burden only decreased when her children all moved out.
(Businesses big and small have only one goal, and you now it, make money! that is their moral imperative. If it means that someone has more time time consume in soem other direction, great, and if it has no affect on theiir well being - tough shit.)

Next. "The major changes that Big Business technologies haveproduced are most evident most in the social distinctions they tend to
eliminate." So you mean that someone in Manhattan is now on the same level as some one from poor Appalachia because they both use Tide or Cheer? Or do you mean that it has caused men to take up an equal share of the domestic duties? Please explain.

  "Because Big Business place emphasis on standardization, because its immediate objective is effective work, it makes of a culture, standardization and puts great emphasis on the generic. Like the Army, it seeks to make us uniform." First, as stated before, business has one objective - make money, everything follows from that. Interchangeable parts and line assembly were simply better ways to reach a wider market. And uniform production that "makes us allthe same" ended with the old Ford Model T. Now they want to offer you a thousand different options so that you can feel different even in the midst of your mass culture of consumption. Ray ban doesn't want us all to wear the same glasses anymore than GM wants us to drive the same car.

"So equlity, while not its goal, is its result." Many people have cars, is that what you call equality? Many people buy Tide, does that make me equal to Bill Gates?

 "...the world is flat because Big Business technolgies are, again, not bu design, but by nature, deomcratic." Did you really write this or were you channeling some tormented capitalist spirit? The world id not flat either geographically or socio-economically. Please look around (then again, maybe from where you sit it appears that way). Business is emphatically not democratic. I dont even know where you get that. You think Monsanto is democratic? They will cover your mouth, they will attack your person, they will stop at nothing to stop anyone who stands in oppostion to their goal of money. Go ask people in Bhopal or a thousand other places if business is democratic. Business thrives in democracy, no doubt, but that hardly makes it democratic. Take this from somone close to people at the heart of big names in big business.

Alice, I respect you greatly when it comes to your posts on literature and other related issues, but i think we stand far apart regarding this particular subject.

all the best
mc


----- Original Message -----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 11:33 AM
Subject: Re: Way-out, Saturday party-time, plist-type open-ended question....grounded in Puritanism maybe?

Isn't this too simple? That is, the argument that its all down to Big
Business profits and damn Everything and Everybody elese? Sure it is.
There are thousands of other considerations and ignoring these is
rather foolish. We cannot accept the benefits of Big Business
technologies without accepting the moral imperatives and the aesthetic
forms that come with them. Sure. And puritan themes are not
scientific.

But, here are two fairly obvious things to consider. So, the Big
Business soap, the washing machine, made life easier for those who
were condemned to do the laundrey (the powerless and poor, most of
them women). The major changes that Big Business technologies have
produced are most evident most in the social distinctions they tend to
eliminate. Because Big Business place emphasis on standardization,
because its immediate objective is effective work, it makes of a
culture, standardization and puts great emphasis on the generic. Like
the Army, it seeks to make us uniform. So equlity, while not its goal,
is its result. The invisivle hand of Smith was made a Visible Hand, as
Chandler explain. Or, if you prefer a modern phrase that omits much of
the moral tones of Smith, the world is flat because Big Business
technolgies are, again, not bu design, but by nature, deomcratic.

Second, the goal is more leisure time or the freedom of other human
capacities. So, if one is not scrubbing a rich man's drawn down by the
river side, well, one might be making up a blues tune for the ages.