Chaos, Fractals & GR

[Mathew Jacobson, Green Mountain Forest Watch]

>Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 12:11:07 +0100
>From:grnmt at sover.net (Mathew Jacobson, Green Mountain Forest Watch)
>Subject:Re: Chaos, Fractals & GR
>
>Well I'm sure glad we've morphed up a level, debating now the
>applicability of systems to the text rather han the applicability of A
>System  -  the concept of systemization being, it seems t'me, the
>predominant theme running throughout Tommy's work.  GR in it's
>encyclopediac way does a wonderful job, not just of exploring systems, but
>of taking them on.  Anyone who tries to apply their own system to the
>text. be it fractal theory or scatology will find it everywhere, and find
>that every peice is hitched to all the others, and eventually journeyman,
>equiped with system in hand finds not V, but the end of the road.
>
>Pynchon, rather than politically arguing against each of the systems the
>characters either use or are trapped by follows them to the extreme, to
>the point where they can no longer cary the weight they bear, which it
>seems to me is his critique of "modern" civilization.  Melville, in his
>inability to ignore the Great WHite God of His Fathers like his
>transcendentalist buddies went one on one with him.  Pynchon seems to be
>boxing with God too, but God now is a System.
>
>Systems arise out of our cerebral cortex as a survival mechanism through
>interaction with the outside world, the problem being that the world is
>not static - change being the only constant.  We then are faced with two
>choices, to expand our "systems" or to remake the outside world in their
>image.  To expel the preterite because their mere existance invalidates
>our system.  To obliterate from the earth all those with other systems
>because the functionality of their system chinks away at the safe confines
>of our own.  To clearcut the primeval forest because the clangourous green
>creation threatens to dwarf our conssciousness to threaten our Dominion,
>to shake us out of our comfortable paranoia.  To replant with genetically
>improved super trees and make the forest more healthy, to stop the fires,
>to stop the old trees from crashing to the floor of the forest where
>-gasp!-new trees will grow on their decaying trunks and fungi and insects
>will reabsorb them into the creation  -  because corpses must be embalmed
>see.  Once and only once.
>
>The problem is not systems- per se, but our placing prevalance of the
>system over the thing the system attempts to deal with.  To elevate the
>symbol over that which the symbol represents, to cut away and eradicate
>everything that does not fall within our Stencil - everything that tears
>at the edges of our comfortable and familiar openings.  What lurks outside
>our (Their?) range of vision and our illusion of control?  Nothing  if
>They (We?) can help it.
>
>Neopagan wishful thinking perhaps, but GR does seem to propose that
>polytheis might present some answers, and seems to point that Monotheism
>of A God or A System is the problem.  Not truth and meaning but One Truth
>a McTruth, and all others be damned.  If I remember correctly, Geli
>Tripping was one of the few who made it out OK.  Pip redeemed?
>
>GR reads to me more like a prolonged western version of a Zen Book of
>Koans  - that pushes us beyond the boundary of reason, rationality,
>system.  ANy system we bring will collapse, unless we're willing to
>eliminate Knot-so-Kute Kontradictions.  To eliminate the preterite from
>our analysis and Tommy won't let us get away with this too easy, cuz even
>the bad guys only had one moment of peace, getting blown in a closet at a
>party, and isn't he, and They more trapped and doomed by the system than
>those who are Passed Over?
>
>You are climbing a tree that is on fire.  Pretty soon you'll reach the
>top.  Do you jump off?
>
>GR is about jumping off the flaming tree.  We may die when we hit ground,
>but it'll be a fun fall with nice views.
>
>Life is there, the titans are there amidst the Kontradictions, amidst the
>damned, the doomed, the drugged, the dumb, the drunk, the dismissed, the
>dissapeared, the doped, and the demented.
>

Mathew Jacobson
Green Mountain Forest Watch
48 Elliot St *Brattleboro, VT 05301 * (802) 257-4878 * (FAX) 257-8529

A few keep going over to the titans every day...