MDMD(2): Deflation and Friendship flip-flop

[Sojourner]

At 02:44 PM 7/3/97 BST, andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:
>Thomas Vieth writes:
>> WRT Andrew's remarks on the occult:
>
>> I think you're on the wrong track there. My view is that TRP is using it 
>> for its face value; that is, for is dichotomy of nature and its 
>> irrationality and technocracy and its rationality. Again - we had a 
>> similar thread before, remember - I feel what he is telling us is to 
>> overcome this epistemological dichotomy. He takes both sides serious and 
>> seems to tell us that when we only take one side serious we're in 
>> trouble.
>
>I don't believe that Pynchon is for one minute suggesting that we
>would be better off conducting our affairs on the basis of astrology
>rather than, say, physics. Look what that did for Himmler and
>Hitler. But he *is* telling us that there is nothing forcing us to use
>physics in place of astrology other than our desire to use one or the
>other. 


>The world does not force either upon us, we choose to apply one
>or other (or both) system(s) to the world for our own good reasons -
>`good' here being something we (individually and collectively - and
>there is yet another tension we have to resolve) determine the sense
>of.
>

I couldn't agree more!  The search for what is "good" is the search for
what "is".  I cannot think of any system of beliefs, religion, dogma or
metaphysics (ooof!) which would stray from this.

Perhaps it is TRP's grasp of this and subsequent read-through via words
which makes his books so deliciously magic.