GRGR(15): Enzian, nihilism, and a few other things

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> Jeremy Osner said, among other things in a fine post, "Pointsman's problem
> is that he is obsessed by his science, to the point that (generalizing) he
> does not regard other people as people but as potential subjects" which
> would seem to put Pointsman on par with other forces in GR that see humans
> and indeed life in general as disposable pawns in their game, the Nazis for
> example as we see in Pokler's story a bit later on (in the episode that,
> falling at GR's center, might be said to be the novel's heart), where a
> narrator tells us that Pokler and his Nazi colleagues considered humans
> (concentration camp slaves) no more than production inputs along with the
> rest of the raw material that creates the Rocket, and puts this sort of
> industrial economy in a bigger, global picture of a System whose ultimate
> crime is that it breaks nature's law of return -- birth, death, and renewal
> in a cycle of universal return, breaking the cycle at the point of death
> with no hope of renewal. Not a dime's worth of difference between the Nazis
> and the 'muricans and the Brits and the rest of the industrialized powers
> in GR's moral economy. By making them the final keepers of the Rocket,
> Pynchon shows us how doubly fucked over are Enzian and his co-opted (and
> corrupted) comrades, coming as they do from a people hunted to
> near-extinction, seduced into the service of the ultimate technological
> expression of the System that sought to exterminate them.
> 
> d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n
> http://www.dougmillison.com
> http://www.online-journalist.com


Thanks Doug. Great stuff here, but one question. I'm not
disagreeing but asking for a little more, please sir, some
more?

 "Not a dime's worth of difference between the Nazis
 and the 'muricans and the Brits and the rest of the
industrialized powers
 in GR's moral economy."

I probably agree here, but I'm not sure, I'm confused by
"moral economy" ??