Rathenau Pain & Addiction

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

"Rathenau---according to the histories---was prophet and
architect of the cartelized state
.demolishing the barriers
of secrecy and property that separated firm from firm---a
corporate Bismarck
.It might almost---if one were paranoid
enough---seem to be a collaboration here, between both sides
of the Wall, matter and spirit. What IS it they know that
the powerless do not? What terrible structure behind the
appearances and diversity and enterprise?" 

Herr Rathenau: 

"Then the discovery of Oneirine. Ask your man Wimpe
.But all
I have is the molecule, the sketch
Methoneirine, as the
sulfate. Not in Germany, but in the United States. There is
a link to the United States. A link to Russia. Why do you
think von Maltzan and I saw the Rapallo treaty through? It
was necessary to move to the east. Wimpe can tell
you
.Consider coal and steel. Passed over
.We passed over
the coal-tars. A thousand different molecules waited in the
preterite dung. This is the sign of revealing. Of unfolding.
This is one meaning of mauve, the first new color on Earth,
leaping to earth's light from its grave miles below
."

"BUT  this is all the IMPERSONATION OF LIFE. The real
movement is not from death to any rebirth. It is from death
to DEATH TRANSFIGURED. The best you can do is to polymerize
a few DEAD molecules. But polymerizing is not resurrection.
I mean your IG, Generaldirektor
.You don't have to listen.
You think you'd rather here about what you call 'life'; the
growing, organic Kartell. But it's only another illusion. A
very clever robot
.new cosmic bombs. The persistence, then,
of structures favoring death. Death converted into more
death
.This is the sign of Death the impersonator. These
signs are real. They are also symptoms of a process
.You
must ask two questions. First, what is the nature of
synthesis? And then: what is the real nature of control?"   
GR.165-167

This scene is worth reconsidering as we read this
Tchitcherine chapter. Important, I think, is the idea of the
impersonation of life and death to death transfigured and
the questions posed by Rathenau about the nature of
synthesis and the real nature of control. How are things,
people, events, ideas, dreams, deaths, and lives connected? 

Rathenau, the "prophet and architect of the cartelized
state" (// = ~ Byron the Bulb, the Grid's sullen
prophet-doomed to immortality) says, "secular history is a
diversionary tactic" and that the truth of matters is to be
found in the technology, in  "certain molecules."  What are
these molecules? 

Perhaps Tchitcherine never met Wimpe? But what are we to
take from the discussion of pain and addiction? Wimpe says
that the salesman:

 "believe in real pain, real deliverance---we are knights in
the service of that Ideal. It must all be real, for the
purposes of our market. Otherwise my employer---and our
little chemical cartel is the model for the very structure
of nations-becomes lost in illusion and dream, and one day
vanishes into chaos. Your own employer as well." 

What is the terrible structure behind the appearances and
diversity and enterprise?

It might almost---if one were paranoid enough---seem to be
collaboration here, between both sides of the Wall, matter,
and spirit.

Synthesis and Control: control of the stuff that dreams are
made on, perhaps some Jungian bureaucratic dream stuff? What
doe Nietzsche say about the birth of metaphysics and the
death of god?  

See GR.410 Polker, Kekule, Jung, IG


Perhaps the most sophisticated, the most insidious form of
Control, is the control given force by an engineered
appearance of randomness.  Maybe we can never know these
mysteries, Imipolex G, Wimpe's meeting with Tchitcherine,
Jamf's existence, Slothrop's conditioning, but maybe the
anxiety, the suspicion, is all that is needed. Does a loss
of certitude engender a loss of fortitude? How incidental is
the random distribution, the Poisson distribution? Maybe the
randomness is an illusion. Have They engineered the
political, the social, the psychological reaction to
apparent randomness?  Is this apparent randomness another
form of Control, some sort of reversal, like the Rocket's
reversal, like a film reversal? Some false reversal, some
imitation of nature, some "pornography," some subversion of
nature's randomness, something repressed? Death
transfigured, more death?   

 "But the reality is not reversible" but "we are content to
call it 'chance.' Or we have been persuaded." GR.139-140

Persuaded that that we have no control and that the Rockets
will fall according to the laws of chance and not that the
house has rigged the game. In a very real way, the game is
Nuclear War.  

What shadows would spawn from that unholy gang-bang? What
Mutually Assured Madness has forged the paradoxical
self-defense that refuses to account for death? A MAD death
transfigured. Shall we let it sink into the mundane recesses
of Tube exhausted indifference? Are Rockets simply one of
the accepted hazards of postmodern existence, another one of
those terrible things we cannot do anything about? Should we
accept these reversals, these pains as our pleasure, deny
death, not speak of such horror, write it down in a book,
reversing the oral tradition with papered over cultural
amnesia?  Shall we make it a forbidden subject, the
fascination of the romantically morbid, a death
transfigured, a Weissman's transcendence? 

Oh Plato, what is this madness that Socrates would make a
blessing? Even Belinda's frail beauty is trampled neath the
struggle of these two horses and  Peter has dropped the
reins and sinks from the weight of his massy keys of metals
twain. Brown and Becker have no words for my despair. Oh
tangle me in the locks of Belinda's hair so I may know that
dust is only dust. 

Terrance