Pynchon and Faith

[davemarc]

I had written:

"If I understand Doug correctly, he's stating that Pynchon believes that
the
Holy Ghost once interacted with humans.  

"I have trouble feeling that that's the meaning of Pynchon's statement in
that essay.  I tend to interpret it more as meaning that there was a time
when it was believed much more than now that the Holy Ghost was
interacting."

I want to take another shot at that statement, quoted by Doug as:  

"Sloth will continue to evolve away from its origins in the long-ago age of
faith and miracle, when daily life really was the Holy Ghost visibly at
work and time was a story, with a beginning, middle and end. Belief was
intense, engagement deep and fatal.  The Christian God was near. Felt.
Sloth -- defiant sorrow in the
face of God's good intentions -- was a deadly sin"

I think Pynchon means that there was a time "long-ago" when many
Christians--enough to qualify historically as "Christian culture"--"felt"
the presence of God saturating every aspect of their lives, defining their
lives.  That time is not this time.  

Elsewhere in the essay, if I recall correctly, he appears to say that
although the long-ago feeling of the
Christian God's profound, defining omnipresence has subsided, its
replacement (among the descendants of those old Christians) may be
Technology, that today's Holy Ghost is technology.  Which sounds
reasonable, but disturbing, to me. I'd like to think that Humanity should
play that role.  But I suppose that,
historically, Humanity has usually been the underdog.  

All this gets me to thinking about themes in Mason & Dixon, GR, V., and
Vineland, perhaps with Warlock tossed into the mix.  Has Pynchon been
meditating on the ascendance of Technology since the Age of Reason, while
worrying over Humanity's plight?

d.