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

[rj]

TF
> The moral messages are often in conflict, but how are they
> dependent on local context and individual perspective for a
> particular truth? 

If you're Slothrop, say, then the Dora prisoners and Marvy's Mothers
pose just as much a threat -- are just as potentially "evil", or morally
in the wrong -- as the Nazis. What the Nazis did to the prisoners in
Dora is morally wrong but what the liberated prisoners have done to the
little girl is also morally wrong.

> For example, the abuse of the African's by the white
> colonialists (though black in humor and twisted in ironies),
> depicts a moral truth, accepted and agreed upon by all.
> There is no room for moral ambiguities here. What the whites
> do to the Africans can not be justified.

"All" who? Enzian can certainly accept: "*We make Ndjambi Karunga now
omahuna*" -- It isn't a request or a command, it's a simple statement of
what will be, what is.

> If we deal with
> this example, say with David M's fine suggestion that we
> apply moral judgments to specific context (pragmatism or
> neo-pragmatism), it is clear that the actions of the white
> colonialists are evil. 

What about the Rhenish Missionary society? Were they evil too? They were
certainly first on the scene, weren't they?

> Introducing other examples only
> defeats the pragmatic approach.

But the examples don't exist in isolation in the first place. And who is
the judge who can stand outside it all in the guise of an omniscient
divinity and determine the grades and sequences of "evil"? Do you
presume to such objectivity? I don't believe Pynchon does.

> Where do you get this from? This would be a very profound
> statement if it is true and can be supported by the text.

I get it from reading the novel. Are you saying that it isn't true and
that it isn't supported by the text? If so, then the onus of textual
rebuttal falls to you, I believe.

> Does Pynchon or GR carry this major theme--that individual
> perceptions are limited and preconditioned? 

Slothrop? Pointsman? Jamf? Pavlov? The Baby Jesus Con Game? Hullo?!

> Does the novel
> or Pynchon somehow confirm that this applies to the reader?

Yes. The last page of the novel, for instance, communicates explicitly
and directly with the current reader.

best