GRGR (15): Good & Evil: Utilitarianism

[David Morris]

>From: "Seb Thirlway"
>
>From: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>
>
> >Trouble is,
> >the  alternative to psychology might be to veer more in the direction
> >of the DISMAL science namely Economics--the Good being the Maximization 
>of Utility
>
>For me this utilitiarianism topic goes a hell of a long way -
>connections cropping up everywhere, more than I can pull together
>while still making sense.  It's TRP's answer to the old question
>"who decides what the happiness of the greatest number is?".
>Utilitarianism implies commensurability of happiness, knowledge
>of every other's scale of happiness, implies surveillance as a
>necessary condition, implies the wonderful, Holy Grail (to Them)
>possibility of control.  Gives Them a wonderful ambiguity - well,
>isn't efficiency a good thing?  "we're not evil control-freaks,
>we're just nice utilitarians, and why shouldn't we control to a
>good end?  Come on, chin up young man, there's a war on you
>know".

Interesting link here: Utilitarianism & Happiness.  From Their perspective, 
it makes perfect sense.  Their ultimate fulfillment of this equation would 
be to transform all men into machines, as Pointy seems to want: everything 
predictable and controllable.  Happiness in this sense means successful 
conditioning, manufactured desire implanted into the subject with subsequent 
periodic doses of the "desired" stimulus, as long as the subject behaves 
correctly.

>It makes Roger and the Counterforce more ambiguous as well -
>economics and large-scale management are always presented as the
>domains of clear-eyed, unsentimental adults (cf. the rhetoric
>here in the UK in the Thatcher years).  So what does that make
>Roger, or anyone else who isn't at home in the Panopticon?  More
>human than the rest, or a child, a weirdo, a freak?

Yes, and Roger knows this is the slot he's headed for.

>So going back to an earlier topic, the S/M fits in nicely.  The
>only escape from the Panopticon and its cut and dried, generic,
>categories of pleasure and pain is through weird, passed-over,
>opaque and ambiguous pleasures and pains - if all "normal",
>"natural" (read "statistically normal") pleasure and pain has
>been pressed into service as a lever in Their machinery, then you
>can still escape by deliberately trashing your own pleasure/pain
>categories - a meta-solution (as in Katje escaping from Blicero's
>scenario).

Yes!  One way "out" of slavery is to turn the tables on them (and yourself): 
Love the pain, thus regain self-control.  This theme recurs over and over in 
Pynchon's texts.  Remember Austra in MD?  She did this very thing and thus 
took on an edge of danger aimed back at her captors.

>Pointy discovers this, academically, without
>realising it, because for him it's a step on the way to the
>precise opposite - more control: one way out of the game is to
>deliberately make yourself go paradoxical, i.e. turn your
>pleasure/pain scale upside down, or ultra-paradoxical (and I've
>never worked out the implications of this "ultra-paradoxical"
>business - is it authentic Pavlov, or TRP's own invention?).
>  So - S&M.

Funny turn of events here also, though I'm not sure I fully follow the logic 
of his transition.  Pointy IS looking for a door out of the maze, knowing 
he's heading for a dead end, and starts to veer from orthodox Pavlovianism.  
He does go "ultra-paradoxical" through his obsession with Slothrop.  And he 
does gain more control, begins to feel his virility pumping, and becomes the 
moving force at the White Visitation.  But how has he "turn his 
pleasure/pain scale upside down?"

>Or maybe what Pointy has discovered is going to result in more
>control, as he hopes - then not only do They have access to your
>ordinary pleasure/pain, but They can also read, catalogue and
>influence any meta-solution you come up with ---  AARGGHHH!

Great post again, Seb

David Morris
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