Systems kill....

[Jan KLIMKOWSKI]

Wellwellwell....  A real discussion at last on the good ol' P-list.

A few scattered thoughts:

For Bonnie - check out Nick Roeg's 70s and early 80s movies, for a gifted 
filmmaker doing something you may find familiar.....

For Tim - a certain professor @ MIT would say there are no conspiracies, 
only rivers.  An example of a river is huge university medical programmes 
training their students in biostatistics and ignoring bioethics.  The 
consequence is that in the field, these doctors think in terms of 
biostatistical proofs and carry on administering experimental drugs even 
after it is clear they are killing infants precisely because it is 
statistical proofs which are needed.  For this system, statistical trends 
merely beg the question.

Now, the individuals involved in these trials are not evil (well, hopefully 
not), just stupid, and unable to think beyond statistics to the real human 
consequences of their work.  Most people on the P-list still inhabit 
universities, and are doubtless struck by the inability of even 
conventionally intelligent people to think outside standard and ruling 
frameworks of thought.  Where shooting of referees does occur, it's usually 
for tedious and trivial reasons.  Of course systems evolve, wither etc etc 
but they still have real effects....

In this context, I'd like to mention TP's treatment of the western esoteric 
(occult, if you will) tradition.  We know that American, Soviet and Chinese 
intelligence agencies spent four decades R&D-ing psychic phenomena for use 
in offensive and defensive actions.  For instance, it's long been alleged 
that after Penkovsky was executed, the CIA held seances as they sought to 
squeeze the very last drop of information from him....  It has also been 
alleged that the Soviets tried to identify gifted psychics at a very young 
age, and then develop their talents in intelligence academies (well, if it's 
good enough for Olga Korbut....).   And during the US bombing of Libya, 
allegedly synchronized for primetime news bulletins on the East Coast, 
claims have been made that the US Army's team of  precognitive psychics were 
employed, not simply to identify whether Qaddafy was in Libya, but where 
precisely he would be (ie a couple of days into the future) at the time for 
which the bombing was scheduled.  As we know, they missed.....

Now, at one level, all of the above, if true, is risible.  But what is 
clear, as with the CIA and US Army's development of LSD, is that the system 
or mindset within which phenomena are approached and developed is crucial. 
 For lobotomy king and CIA contract chemist, Dr Paul Hoch, LSD-25 and 
mescalin produced temporary insanity, and thus he invented the brand new 
category of "psychoto-mimetics" to describe hallucinogens, and subsequent 
CIA research took place within these parameters (so that when the 
incapacitant BZ was discovered, it was regarded simply as another 
"psychoto-mimetic", whereas it's doubtful whether it should even be placed 
in the same pharmaceutical category as LSD and mescalin).

Equally though, I personally believe that TP has a genuine and continuing 
interest in matters esoteric, beyond his points about the use made of such 
things by particular systems.  And, yup, I couldn't agree more with Jeffrey 
and Andrew that GR is an incredibly moral, political and didactic book, and 
I often suspect that it is precisely the parameters of contemporary litcrit 
which render it impossible for the Academy to approach the book in these 
terms.  Personally, I've always supected the Pulitzer jury were worried 
about more than the dense style and unnatural sexual practices...


jan


PS having failed to outgrow adolescence, Geli Tripping is easily my 
favourite piece of naming in Pynchon.....