Saved? ... & They

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

Richard Romeo writes:

> Mr. HAG:  I for one would never claim to say I know what Mr. TRP is 
> saying.  

Dear Richard. (Or may I call you Ricky? Thanks.) Dear Ricky. (No? 
Ok.) Dear Mr Romeo. You are undoubtedly pointing out certain 
authoritarian tendencies in my humble postings by addressing me 
so deferentially. I apologize. I will henceforth attempt to clearly 
state that all opinions expressed by me are mine, mine, mine alone, 
and not necessarily TRP's.

>       My views on who They are is similarly opaque.  I kinda think 
> They're out there but if They're not I'm just as freaked.  Do We then 
> realize They has been some bastard inanimate construction of 
> Us--relinquishing through years of misery and disillusion our zest for 
[...]
> Hope this answers something...

Yes, it does. Works for me. What I like about TRP's use of 'Them' is 
that it can be read from different perspectives at different times. A 
Marxist could argue that They are evil capitalists wanting to control 
our labour; while a more sophisticated Marxist might argue that They are the 
various inanimate or mechanical market structures and related forces 
in a capitalist society propagating Their own structures by using our 
animate labour (living energy, etc, etc.). A feminist might argue 
They are simply men oppressing women because They project the 
unmentionable Other onto them; while a sophisticated feminist might 
argue They rely on socially constructed gender identities which 
enslave both male and female to.... 
                                                         you get my drift. I think my bias 
is quite apparent. Sometimes, furiously mixing metaphors, jumping 
wildly from hamster to Bill Gates to Dawkins' memes or Dennet's 
"culture as virus", I think of it in terms of two orders of being. Us 
humans are the first, They are the second. Since They are inanimate, 
They need us to animate them - we in effect become the deux 
ex machina, the little homunculus, the hamster in the treadmill. 
Imagine the treadmill being set up in such a way that it stops 
being a treadmill once it stops turning, and also being part of a 
clockwork-type system of treadmills all churning away. Imagine the 
treadmill as a type of virus, using the hamster's energy, or rather, 
almost literally, the hamster's life to propagate itself. In this 
scenario, for instance, Turner Broadcasting would be a 'treadmill ' 
(system) and Time Warner another, using the armies of human 
underlings to run it. A fusion of the two would be like a marriage of 
treadmill interests, something to benefit both partners. Originally, the 
treadmill may have been a way for us to gather food, select a mating 
partner, even just exercise, but now it is we who serve the 
treadmill. Our fear of death, caused by certain religious tendencies 
I will not mention, has been projected onto these treadmills, who try 
their damndest not to die. And they are quite good at it, too. People 
may come and go, inhabit the structure and animate it, but while they 
(the humans) die They (the structures) persist, meld with others, 
develop ways to control us, etc, etc. In his Luddite article, TRP 
mentions the "curves of research" of various fields (artificial 
intelligence, etc) providing the next challenge. In simple terms, 
soon They will not need us any more to animate them, having created 
the possibilities of being animated by inanimate agencies. The next 
challenge, indeed. Maybe TRP's next novel will be a cyberpunk novel, 
after all. The cyberpunk novel to end all cyberpunk novels. The last 
cyberpunk novel. Although there are those who argue that he was 
writing cyberpunk all along. I personally have absolutely no idea 
what he might come up with next. Maybe a sequel, so that he can buy 
that Porsche?

hg
hag at iafrica.com