MDMD(2): Deflation and Friendship flip-flop

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Greg Montalbano writes:
> I have to wonder if this represents an evolution of TRP's view of history,
> or perhaps his attempt to correct a long standing, widespread
> misapprehension of his writing:  it has long been taken for granted (by
> reviewers & a number of scholars) that TRP is "the paranoid's paranoid",
> and assumed that he takes all of these conspiracy theories seriously.  Is
> it not possible that, all this time, what he has really been writing about
> is the overwhelming human need to impose structure on random events, a need
> so compelling that we all willingly assume our roles in whatever "grand,
> master conspiracies" are presented to us? -- and about the absurd lengths
> some will go to, to connect the dots -- 

Absolutely. That's how I have always read him first and foremost
(apart from in some of my more paranoid moments, that is). That's why
he contrasts paranoia with anti-paranoia. To show that paranoia is a
common consequence of taking the world even the slightest bit
seriously, especially when the world has a habit of bending the rules
on you. The implication being that science is not that far away from
organised, regulated mass paranoia (and in Pynchon's metaphysics that
doesn't remove it too far from T H Huxley's definition of science as
`organised common sense'). Anyone who thinks Pynchon takes the White
Visitation psy or psi wierdos seriously has got to be kidding.

It's not particularly relevant to Pynchon's purpose that certain
particulars are true or false. What is important is that what can be
accepted as true^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H . . .  oops, sorry, what can be true
or false is a consequence of how we choose to cut our conceptual cake,
and this stands independent of the results of any particular
observations. Sometimes we choose our concepts carefully on the basis
of past experience in the hope we get results we like. But we don't
have to and concepts do often grow after their own bizarre fashion for
arbitrary reasons.

And note also that much of the justification for including the occult
in GR is that the occult was very much included in the history he
deals with, particularly by the Nazis. There is plenty of evidence
that a lot of senior Nazis were completely potty wrt the occult (just
that? no, but including that). He includes it as evidence for the
bizarre systems people will come up with and accept to explain and
justify things the way they want. The Nazis clearly developed the most
outrageous theories in order to support their desires and prejudices.
If they can do it so can any group with a common powerful enough
ideology -- British war-time scientists, Virginians in the 1670s,
Russians in the 1920s or even enlightened, liberal rationalists in the
1990s. Rather than suggesting we take potty theories seriously as
theories, he is warning us that we have to be very careful whenever we
theorize to ensure that we pay attention to the political and moral
rationale behind our theorizing and that we are flexible enough to
change our views when we discover that what we have come to believe
does not produce the consequences we expect or hope for.

Sufficient unto the day are the realities thereof. That's Pynchon's
motto.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
We drank the blood of our enemies.
The blood of our friends, we cherished.