Ford vs. Chevy

12/28/03

Fred Allebach

PO Box 4588, WRJ, VT 05001

fca25@yahoo.com

Hello Davis,

I am interested in exploring some themes vis a vis utility, functionality, reality and brand names, specifically the whole Ford/ Chevy thing, but also more abstractly, what is Quality and how do we know it? What constitutes a reasonable value judgment and how would we be able to discriminate between truth and bullshit?  Why is reason different for different people? It is all my opinion, resulting from my interests and personal history.

For a person sitting on the sidelines, brand loyalty is a curious phenomenon.  Your dear mother is totally sold on Listerine and will not hear of it when I show her that brand X, with the exact same ingredients, and lots less expensive, is really the same stuff, just as good. Is brand X not as good because it is less expensive and therefore “cheap?” It is almost like magical belief, to think that two things with the same ingredients are different. Could the package somehow transfer some unknown power to the mouthwash that would  make the otherwise same ingredients different?

Is there something about the packaging that makes a person feel better about drinking a fucking Heineken versus a Milwaukee’s Best? Is a beer a beer? Is a truck a truck?  Some generic medicines are far less expensive, contain the exact same ingredients, and are just as efficacious, yet people will buy Advil thinking it is somehow a better form of ibuprofen. I don’t see the logic about that, but maybe as I proceed here, it will become clear that logic does not have much to do with preference.

The role of hype, or market pressure, has to be considered. With a beer, perhaps if we put Dog Piss Beer in a Heineken bottle, then Yuppies would think it was great, not knowing that they had been duped by sheer hype. With beer I think packaging has more to do with status than actual quality or taste, people go for the packaging and the price, believing it must be better. I think they would not know if the product inside was actually cheap shit.  I hate, hate to be hyped, yet I am receptive to hype I believe is somehow true, and then I don’t see it as hype. I even hew to a sort of reverse hype, I take pleasure in getting the cheapest, much to people’s horror and disgust, “how can you drink that!?” Certainly many believe that if a product costs more, than it must be better. I think that is mostly bullshit myself but I would admit that some things that cost more actually are better, like meat products, clothes, stereo equipment etc., but there is also an outer limit beyond which more quality will not make any difference, that is the land for extremists, hobbyists, fanatics, folks who are just really into it. For example, how can a pair of new jeans actually cost $60 or more dollars? There is no way in Hell they are really worth that much, people are paying for hype and packaging. (And Captain Reverse Hype goes to the dumpster and laughs all the way home.)

The trouble for people is in distinguishing between what is hype and what might be actually true. With no way to measure or analyze whether a claim is genuine or spurious, it all gets down to how a person feels, what hype they tend to be receptive too. How can we know if a car is actually any good? If I read Consumer Reports and not Car and Driver, then my information is slanted one way. I would have to read everything to form a larger opinion, as I cannot trust that any statements by anybody are not influenced by hype and not fact. AND, what facts are changes, it is not the same, for some, the only fact necessary is the brand, for others, it will depend on measures of size, power, reliability, service record. The critical point here is that facts are skewed from the start by the initial assumptions about what is desirable. There are no facts because it is impossible for people to be objective. People can’t be objective because they are descended from fucking apes and they are tribal, clannish, intolerant of difference, hot under the collar and ready to fight. Human history is filled with strife and war precisely because people have fought over stupid shit that doesn’t really matter, but of which a big deal is made.

For me, and this is my own judgment, I really don’t care about American cars, I believe Japanese cars are of the highest quality and that is what I want. I admit that I am under the spell of hype myself, and why I buy this hype, versus other hype, is just my own peculiar thing, arising from my own peculiar history and knowledge. I have reasons, but I know they are not equivalent to the truth. I know no one else has the truth either. It is all preference. My reasons: many to all my friends have or like Toyotas. People who camp out a lot have Toyotas. Rock climbers and outfitters have Toyotas. You see Toyotas in Africa and Arabia, on tough substrates. My model year and close years are known to run for very high mileage. You see them everywhere, so they must be good. I associate myself with an image, that puts me in a tribe of car people.

Car customization is a fascinating area to observe, as most people enjoy customizing their ride in one way or another. A vehicle is a very public statement about who is inside it and what they represent. I can think of low riders, muscle cars, trucks, sports cars, roadsters, and luxury cars among others.  I personally appreciate them all, but tend to scoff at luxury cars and roadsters as being owned by assholes. I don’t want to be in thosae tribes. Within all of these kinds of customization there are quite a few variations and plenty of room for people to express themselves. You see all kind of stuff on cars and trucks and even though a person may be from one school or another, I can myself, appreciate the joy and devotion people put into their vehicles, as I have been there myself with my cars, in my own way. I maintain that it is all the same phenomena, just different vehicles and styles. I don’t feel the need to tear someone else down to build myself up. I like my truck just for what it is, not because it is “better” than a Nissan or a Chevy.  I have had fun with my truck, it is a statement about my personal history and travels.

But with different car tribes you get into what Elaine Pagels termed “the intimate enemy” effect. In her books about early Christianity and the history of the Devil, she spoke about the tendency of Christians to vilify and demonize the Jews. (Christianity grew out of Judaism and they are VERY similar.) Christians and Jews are so similar; they can argue about minute differences in doctrine and get really worked up about it. These differences seem pitifully small to anyone looking from the outside in. Christians and Jews normally don’t care about Shinto or Buddhism, as it is so different, there is not much to contend. But, you get some mainline Protestants together and they will all get worked up about Mormons. This is the phenomenon of the intimate enemy: the more similar you are to someone else, or to another tribe, then the more contentious relations will be. The larger the difference, the less those differences hit home.

Every human being is partial and accepts into fact only certain domains of knowledge and ignores the rest. We may need to be this way, as we cannot know the whole world all at once. In academics this is what is called lining up your soldiers, getting all your ducks in a row, picking and choosing. Partialization is how we can conveniently ignore any information that is contrary to what we believe to be true. Partialization is how we can call bullshit on stuff we don’t like. In other ways, it allows us to reduce other human beings to animal status, so we can slaughter them, vilify them, call them bad names and generally feel high and mighty over them. Everybody is doing it to each other at the same time, so it can get quite messy. Here again, the facts don’t matter, as it is the primary assumption, the operating premises that lay underneath which direct the consumption of “facts” and information. “It is the theory that decides what we can observe.” Albert Einstein.

A non-partial look would include all sources of information, even that contrary to what we believe. BUT, that takes the FAITH out of the BELIEF, and so people generally do not even want to entertain information that is contrary to their belief, as that would be too hard, too uncomfortable, too dynamic, too out there, then there would be no belief and we would be scientists, dealing with reality. However, even scientists are petty assholes who are plenty partial, so the notion of any objective world is mired in constant argument. It is more about how people want the world to be rather than how it actually is. In my opinion, it is better to allow people their differences and maybe even appreciate them, but that is an ideal and not something I can practice all the time.

Everyone has his or her preferences. Preferences are equivalent to “personal truths”. Trouble comes when people attempt to extend their personal truths into the arena of “general truths”. We could debate whether there is even any general truth, and what that might be? Many an argument comes from confusing personal preferences with some general truth. Religion and politics are classic examples, which get so serious that people get slaughtered and tortured for mere differences of opinion, that don’t hurt anyone. Personal and group opinions and preferences get confused with some kind of fictive absolute truth. (And why the hell should others be hunted down like dogs just for being different?) Here is a conundrum: we try to establish some general arena where people can agree that this set of ideas and behaviors do not hurt anyone, they are all OK to everyone. We might say that civil unions or gay marriage does not hurt anybody, but then Bible literalists will say it does hurt them, because it is against God’s desires. We might say watching TV until midnight is permissible to all, but then some whiny butt will complain that it keeps them up. The upshot is that there is nothing that that will not piss somebody off and therefore, a general truth is actually impossible to achieve, because of the diversity of opinion and inherent tribalism of humanity.

Musical preferences are another area where people argue endlessly about things that just don’t matter beyond one’s own personal preferences. If Kim likes Crash Test Dummies and I don’t so much, I still want to honor her likes; if I condemn her likes, I condemn her, and that I do not want to do. I’ll give it a listen; try to find something there. If parties involved actually believe they are contesting some immutable truths, as in Jerry Garcia is better than Roger Waters, then there is no end, no answer, only strife and suffering. With Kim I want to try and appreciate her choices and likes. With a stranger I might be less inclined to be sympathetic. Here is illustrated again, the stranger, the outsider, the Other, can be reduced to being less than human, just a bunch of fucking flatlanders. It is apparently easier to judge and condemn than it is to accept human variety.

All of music, all of life, is a tapestry within which the threads are people’s lives and interests. For one thread to call the other no good is stupid beyond pale, as they both are holding the world together. Can the pot call the kettle black and have that really mean anything? And where do I get off trying to seem like I know what stupid is and others don’t?

In religion, absolute truth is based on an unchanging and immutable moral substrate, given by God. These types of credos include: that homosexuality is against God, that any behavior not sanctioned in the Bible is a sin, that Nature is given to Man to exploit, animals have no souls, and who gives a fuck about pollution or global warming, as we are all going to Heaven anyway afterwards and earth is just like a big sandbox for us sheep of the Lord to either act good or be condemned to Hell for all eternity. (beeeeep: run-on sentence) And let us not forget that those who work on Sunday should be stoned to death. If Gay behavior and marriage is a sin, then by God, so is working on Sunday! (Tell that to the Brethren, “I can’t do any homework for half of the weekend, because I can’t work on Sunday.) All the major religions have similar stuff and you can always tell a fundamentalist by how rigid they are. There is no discussion; Ford is better than Chevy.

In here somewhere I might mention the difference between being religious and spirituality. Religious is group oriented and frequently dogmatic, spiritual is personal and frequently dogmatic. And mystical is a personal contact with the divine, unmediated by clergy. Religion is threatened by mysticism because a mystic does not need anything religion has to offer. And, what do religions do with mystics? Well, they burn them, hang them, torture them as heretics and infidels because they believe something else other than the official line.

Now, there are moral substrates that do not rest on unchanging, absolute ground. These are made by man and are subject to constant argument. This is the arena of secular humanism, of which many dogmatic religions consider to be the ultimate sin, rules of men rather than God. I prefer this myself, as at least people can talk and exchange and work things through, there can be discussion. It is more like the New England town meeting, people get to have their say and they get to be heard, and if they are persuasive, they can prevail. If there can be no discussion, then we do not need democracy, all we need is a King or a dictator. If there can be no discussion, why even have democracy and America for Christ’s sake, we can all be just like Iran and the Taliban, but only with knot headed Christians at the helm instead of knot headed Muslims. Yeah, let’s stone women to death who go out of the house without a veil and a male relative in tow.

It is fun to playfully fool around with preferences as if they were actually general truths, and we know by our sheer facetiousness, that we can’t possibly be serious. Sure I can carry on about Jerry Garcia, about Toyotas and Hondas, about 100% acrylic paint, but I know that underneath, it is all bluster and that what I prefer really doesn’t apply to someone else and it makes no sense to try and convince someone to believe that my preferences are somehow equal to objective truth (or that someone else would be happier being me!). That is why big arguments can be sidestepped simply by prefacing a statement, “to me…..”, or “in my opinion….”. That way the listener knows there is no attack, no fundamentalist rigidity involved and that it is OK to discuss, OK to air an opinion without being shot down by opinionated bullshit masquerading as the truth.

Having said all this, and admittedly I have no “facts”, but can there really be that big a difference between Ford and a Chevy? They both have cabs, 4 wheels, a bed, an engine, can tow, can be big or average, are warranted to go a certain amount of miles trouble free, they both hold material and get us from here to there. Surely there are enough success stories on either side to go around. The voodoo involved is strong, as I have observed people with bad cases of Chevy hatred, or Ford hatred; they carry on like stuck pigs. It is exactly the same as Muslims and Christians! Ford and Chevy are intimate enemies. It is an endless argument about something that hurts no one, that people get all pissed off about and it seems to me to be a ridiculous waste of time and energy. Who gives a rat’s ass if a Toyota is better than a Nissan or a Dodge or a Chevy? Live and let drive! I just wonder if people really believe it or if it is a game to play to pass the time away while standing around the yard.

Maybe you just enjoy playing Chevy and Ford for the dynamic of it. I am not attacking you Davis, this is just a format for me to say a few things that I have thought during exchanges we have had, and I have not had the chance to ascertain how serious you really are, or how much game there is involved.

I can only know from my own experience that what I think sucks can be separated into two realms, whether I care or not. If I don’t care, then the suck factor does not touch me. Generic Listerine is fine and does not suck to me, as I don’t care, the ingredients are the same. I guess in my own life, what sucks or not, or what has Quality or not, is more important to me in my relationships than with stuff. With stuff, I don’t want dog shit and I don’t need it to be gold coated, and I will learn and become allegiant to brands that perform well in my experience. I’ll also take pride in being able to surmount difficulties with materials or lack of desired brand, with my own ingenuity, and in that way, I have admired many a Nissan in Mexico for the sheer “Mexicanda” that it is.

Anyhow, I got the idea that it would be fun to write you an essay about some of these topics, and that you might find it amusing, possibly even enlightening, but I am totally prepared that you will not care at all, and in that eventuality, I have at least demonstrated that I am interested in who you are and what is inside all that bluster about Ford and Chevy. I like that you have strong opinions and preferences, as that gives me something to latch onto. So, anyhow again, here’s an essay for you, Happy New Year. Fred