Drop It
Aaron Yeater
AYEATER at ksgrsch.harvard.edu
Wed Aug 9 15:07:27 CDT 1995
> It's true, as you say, Harold, that everything is information. But
> sometimes it's a mistake to examine a phenomenon at the wrong level.
> Thinking, for instance, has some relation to brain activity. Would you
> rather read Pynchon's EEG or his books? Dead people are lives blotted out,
> not information randomized. To insist on seeing them as the latter is to
> exalt cybernetic fact over human truth.
but much of what the bomb represents is exactly that, human lives
obscured by the blinding flash and leveling of civilization. I think jporter
was acknowledging that fact about the bomb and its cultural
significance, which is why i think there is another level of meaning,
the "human" one, that you are referring to, which also exists--and it
is the relationship (or lack of one) that reinforces a sense of irony
about the bomb, that leads to "bomb humor" (Dr. Strangelove, GR,
etc.)...which i think is a good think, a healthy, meaningful kind of
criticism. moral outrage is not the only way to make the point.
my .02
aaron
***********************************************************
"For Beauty is naught
But the beginnings of terror"
-Rainer Maria Rilke
"Duino Elegies"
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