MDMD(2): Deflation and Friendship flip-flop

[jporter]

Andrew notes:

> Anyone who thinks Pynchon takes the White
>Visitation psy or psi wierdos seriously has got to be kidding.
>

Of course he takes them very seriously, which is what you meant, but that
he doesn't necessarily believe in what they believe in. Is there a danger
in their "potty theories" from his point of view? Probably, and not only
because such explanations can be used to "connect the dots" and rationalize
genocide, but also, because in more benign groups, they provide easy
answers to hard questions, which then go left unanswered, except in a banal
way.

> 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.

Okay, but that is easy to say. Science, worth the name, is neutral, and
there seems to be no special reason why the objective understanding of the
world, and the subsequent power inherent therein, should be granted only to
those who have paid "careful attention to the political and morale
rationale" behind their theorizing, except in the objectivity of
measurement itself. That, in fact, is the dilemma. The truth does not make
us free. It doesn't care whether we are free or not. It has no point of
view. It is we who are left to connect the dots, as best we can. And as far
as we know, there is no other agency in or around capable of doing the job,
or of even deciding whether it should be done- i.e., refusing to theororize
is as much a theoretical stance, as spinning a world in its entirety,
especially in a world where there are numerous groups waiting for the
opportunity to subject as many as possible to their particular version of
the truth.

Short of irresponsibility, what choice is there?

jody