grgr (34): kreplach

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 27 Aug 2000, Lorentzen / Nicklaus wrote:


> little square, and now i fold it over into a tri---' 'g a a h h h h !'
 screames 
> the kid, in absolute terror --- 'k r e p l a c h!'" (737)
> 

>  ... no weisenburger comment on that ... what seems safe to say is that
 there is 
> a phenomenon of  e m e r g e n c e ... the qualitative jump, which
 cannot be 
> traced back to the single qualities of the involved elements on their
 lower 
> level of aggregation ... unintended consequences, spin-off effects ... the
 
> emergence of horror, the horror of emermergence ... but what, the hell,
 does it 
> mean here?! anyone? ... kfl ...


Emergence is OK. It's another of those critical mass situations with all
the 1945 implications of the term and idea?  Like in the Hell sequence:

" . . . DEVIL'S ADVOCATE's what the shingle sez, yes inside is a Jesuit
here to act in that capacity, here to preach, like his colleague Teilhard
de Chardin, against return. Here to say that critical mass cannot be
ignored. Once the techinical means of control have reached a certain
size, a certain degree of BEING CONNECTED one to another, the chances for
freedom are over for good. The word has ceased to have meaning. It's a
potent case Father Rapier makes here, not without great eloquence, moments
when he himself is clearly moved . . . no need even to be there, at the
office, for visitors may tune in from anywhere in the Convention to his
passionate demonstrations, which often come in the midst of celebrating
what hep humorists here are already calling "Critical Mass" (get it? not
too many did in 1945, the Cosmic Bomb was still trembling in its
earliness . . . ) . . . "  (p. 539)

In other words kreplach could be, among other things, Hiroshima.

			P.