GRGR (15): Good & Evil (was Enzian...)

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> >From: Michael Perez
> >
> >>Terrance wrote:
> >>If there
> >>is an escape, it is not an avenging battle from any side.
> >>This is, I think one of Pynchon's central questions, one he
> >>keeps asking, story after story, How do you defeat evil,
> >>without evil?"
> >
> >As far as the possibility of defeating evil without
> >being evil, I agree that is not possible.  This brings up the whole
> >issue of moral ambiguity (I hope this is a better term than
> >indeterminacy) that exists throughout _GR_.  Many believe that evil in
> >the service of goodness (or perceived goodness) is no longer evil,
> >vengeance is believed by many to be justified - before or after death.
> >
> 
> I say:
> "Good" and "Evil" here discussed are too flimsy.  Is not context needed?
> Can we proscribe w/o context a set of "Good" and "Evil" acts?  "Perception,"
> above, is denigrated, 'cause "Some of my best friends are Black," right?
> Wrong perception is only balanced with more information.  "Good" and "Evil"
> are moving targets, along with "Justice."
> 
> I love Brecht's "The Good Woman of Sezchuan (sp?)"  A simple but deep
> morality play.  Was the Good Woman's Uncle "Evil?"
> 
> David Morris
> 

But in GR we have Blicero, isn't he evil? Not evil in the
white hat black hat of a Pynchon's Progress. But Gottfied is
going to be put in The Rocket 00000, encased in Imipolex
G--a mystery plastic that in GR, consistently represents the
apotheosis of a perverse chemical synthesizing that is not
only unnatural but antinatural and is unequivocally and
inextricably associated with the unhuman, antihuman, indeed
dehumanizing of Humans denying their place as integral
members of Nature. Gottfried, a human person, if he has a
soul or spirit or whatever, he is a human person reduced to
less than the mysterious plastic, as he is at that moment
only part of the "Subimipolexity." Isn't it evil to Control
metaphysics and deny a human person their humanity? Isn't it
evil what the germans have done to the Herero? Isn't Dora
evil? Can't we say that, despite the apparent futility of
Roger's Love, that Pointy's part in destroying that
possibility is evil? Can we also say that the fact that
Roger recognizes that the War is a business that is all
about reducing humans to workers for the Machine economy at
least offers the possibility that Love is Good? How does one
combat enveloping evil without becoming a part of it? This
is a question in MMV, Low Lands, Small Rain, Entropy, V.,
TSI, CL49, and each story there is never an answer, but here
in GR, and this is what makes this novel to me, not simple,
not good and evil didactics, not a moral allegory, not
Pynchon's Progress, but a complex searching for escape,
where the "Counterforce" itself is trapped in the enveloping
malaise and subjected to the ironic parodies and apocalyptic
humor that only hints or scents at a mystery that is not
lost, a magic that is not lost, a true mystery, a natural
mystery of which Man is an integral member, a scent that
draws even the sick, lost, caught in the existentialist's
malaise, "even those upright hostile to bananas who will
come and revere the  miracle, the magic, the ineffable
fecundity of "rings and chains" not aromatic, not
synthesized and controlled, not a gnostic trap, but a "net
only God can tell the meshes of...yes amazing but true."