Discussion opener for GRGR(4) (church and hospital)

[Bill Burns]

HEEEYYY Bonnie!

> 
>>>The point (I gather) is to try to think our way out of binarisms, such that
>>>chaos can be perceived as potentially constructive ... transformation
>>>rather than extinction...?

>Exactly.  But I'm not sure that we can always "think our way out of 
>binarisms," and I think PYnchon wonders, as well.

I'd love to claim responsibility for that bit. Those were Paul Murphy's
comments, not mine. But while your responding, I'll add a few comments on
your post. 

>Sometimes, too many 
>variables beyond our conscious thought, create effects that can 
>ultimately sway us to one side or the other of the either/or spectrum (or 
>the life/death, We/They spectrums).  

In *Vineland*, Mucho Maas points out that "the Tube" existed essentially to
monopolize our time--to distract us from remembering *enlightenment*: "it's
what the Tube is for." In addition, the mediated *truths* we are provided
posit these oppositions that we, if we were paying (or if we had the time to
pay) attention, would recognize as fallacious on our own. The textuality is
there if we choose to pursue it (or if we can shake the blinders away long
enough to see), but if we don't take the initiative, we're none the wiser.
Pynchon's fiction of itself provides the same sort of interplay. The reader
has to engage in the interplay with a certain degree of awareness, or
excluded middle--the relationships that provide the richness in meaning and
the illumination--are lost.

The question the reader struggles with (in the presence of the official
binary opposition) is whether the excluded middle they perceive is one that
is founded in objective reality or based upon their own projections (those
unconscious variables). If perception exists only in our individual
delusions, then we are more likely to be swayed by the two juxtaposed
possibilities, but still we've already germinated the seed of dissent. So
maybe we don't "think" (as in reason) our way out. Maybe we have to key into
some other more intuitive faculty here.

Bill Burns
WDBurns at micron.net
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  "One bad-hair day in the 13th century and 
   suddenly you've got horns." The Devil/*Drew Carey*
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