Chaos, Fractals & GR

[Andrew Dinn]

WildForest at aol.com writes:

> Geeze, this is beginning to sound very much like NRA or Militia
> Movement lit. crit:  Systems don't kill, people kill?  Huh? So much of
> Pynchon's work (particularly V and GR) explores how systems work not to
> exterminate The Other, the Odd, that which is Difference or Diverse--these
> systems aim to exterminate entire genotypes, right?  I mean, one way to read
> V. is as a history of the 20th Century impulse toward genocide, toward
> "concentration camps."  It didn't start w/ the Nazi's.  

What is amazing about V and GR is that they do not address American
genocide. Where is the mention of the native peoples of the Americas.
Where is the mention of the US Civil War - a war which, once begun,
rapidly escalated from a political dispute to `total war', a war in
which there were three sides one of which was never going to win, a
liberation war in which those fighting to liberate the oppressed were
doing so merely to grant them the freedom to live in someone else's
backyard. Perhaps at the time of writing the immediacy and obviousness
of such concerns left them better unstated. If anything makes me
believe that Pynchon is really cooking up that apocryphal Civil War
story or his South American tale it is the centrality of this theme of
racism and genocide.

> Systems always operate beyond the realm of individuals...this why we call
> them "systems" and it is why we sympathize w/ Blicero, Pointsman, even the
> vile Brock Vond.  This is also why most of us reject the notion of William
> Calley being solely responsible for Mai Lai, or Ollie North for Iran/Contra.

This is exactly the point. Systems are in essence communal things and
any communal endeavour involves not just assumption but also
devolution of power, control, responsibility. But there is an obvious
imbalance here. The more organized and comprehensive the system the
greater the devolution but also the lesser share any one individual
can assume. Even the so-called leaders who appear to have all the
power are only hitching a ride on the juggernaut (science and
scientists are not exempt here, pretensions to `objectivity'
notwithstanding).

Systems are supposed to conquer disorder, chaos, to liberate by making
the group more powerful than the sum of its members. But the operation
of any system relies upon tying people into employing it willy
nilly. It requires unsystematic behaviour to change any system. This
is ok so long as circumstance does not require an alternative
response. Only problem is that chaos and disorder are all about
circumstance - it's the nature of the beast.

> All systems are closed.  That's the point.  Even the Counterforce recognizes
> that the Foucault-like We-Systems are doomed to implode.  This is said
> explicitly.  I'll find the page later.

Actually, the quote says that for every `Them-system' there will arise
a corresponding `We-system'. The Counterforce is *born* dependent
which is maybe why it is doomed, like a junkie who can only be
nourished by the hand which will eventually kill him. Maybe that's why
it isn't a resistance, *merely* a war. Resistance is so much more
problematic, requires so much more creativity and intelligence.

> Tim (Ware) goez on to sey:
> 
> If we impose a system on GR and it doesn't "take", what of it?  Some sink 
> to the bottom, some float to the top, some disappear in the mix.
> 
> The what ever gets you through the (sizzling?) night approach is fine for the
> individual reader.  But systems that fail, that mislead, that take followers
> down false trails, do have consequences, often tragic.

Yes, which is maybe why Pynchon wrote the damned book in the first
place. Far from being an exercise in intellectual dalliance it is one
of the most didactic works I have ever read, textbooks included!
Pynchon is no dilettante, preoccupied with systems for their own
mindless pleasure:

    Now what sea is this you have crossed, exactly, and what sea is it
    you have plunged more than once to the bottom of, alerted, full of
    adrenalin, but caught really, buffaloed under the epistemologies
    of these threats that paranoid you so down and out, caught in this
    steel pot, softening to devitaminized mush inside the soup-stock
    of your own words, your waste submarine breath?

    It took the Dreyfus Affair to get the Zionists out and doing,
    finally: what will drive you out of your soup-kettle? Has it
    already happened?  Was it tonight's attack and deliverance? Will
    you go to the Heath, and begin your settlement, and wait there for
    your Director to come?"


> Adios from stumptown.
> JSC
> "At last he could beam at the paper over a nose hypodermically iced out.
>  What interesting reading material.  Ha, ha, ha."


Andrew Dinn
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