Them and Their Technology

[Gillies, Lindsay]

Jan sez:

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I believe Duffy is doing some original research on Walter Rathenau, and I
feel that in the Rathenau-thru-Sachsa scenes (p164-67 GR) we catch glimpses
of Pynchon's sense of the deeper relationship between elemental substances,
technology, and secular ambitions of control.  The elements may have their
own logic and dynamic but They will always try to control and bend that
logic to Their own short term, secular interests.  Or, alternatively,  maybe 


They are sometimes usurped by Their own Systems, carried along by the logic
and dynamic of Systems they think are working for them but which, like
Zhluub and the RayGun, they can really only ride.
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I've always found it curious that Rathenau is the figure chosen for this
disembodied role.  He is the most prominent figure in the Wilhelmine power
structure who at the same time is fundamentally not-Them.  A genius
scientifically and industrially, he was also a Jew, and assassintated by the 

forces that became the They that brought us WW2, Euro edition.  There is
something deeply alchemical here, a conjunction of opposites, a mixing of
basic elements that is meant (as in the medieval texts that Jung mastered)
to convey not chemistry but personal transformation.