GRGR (20) Special Topic: Is It OK to Be a Manichean?

[David Morris]

--- Michael Perez 
< [snip] In _GR_, and Pynchon in general, we
> have a lot of mirror image counterparts and a lot of
> shadow connections that cause the reader to be led
> down the garden path by seemingly obvious symmetry.
> Does it have to be so every time?  Do we have to
> assume that every time we are
> presented with pairs of opposites that the reader is
> supposed to be drawn into considering on which side
> we are?

I'd say yes, in order to get the reader to identify
with the concept.  But Pynchon doesn't let the reader
STOP there.  He then pulls the rug out, forcing the
reader to identify with the OTHER as well, as you
point out in the passage below.

> On which side Pynchon is?
> Is it OK to be a Manichean?

Carl Jung used what you might call a "Manichean" tool
for analysis of psychological concepts: The Mandala. 
Similar to the Axis Mundi, the Mandala presents two
pairs of opposites, North/South - East/West.  But why
stop with a four-spoked wheel?  Why not as many spokes
of opposites as can fit around the wheel?  This
many-spoked mandala points to the blender-mixing
mandala of the Yin/Yang, which ultimately points
toward Unity.

But it is difficult to get your hands around a mandala
with so many opposites.  More than two pairs and your
head start to spin.  One four-spoked wheel of Jung's
was that of what he called psychological "functions:"
Thinking/Feeling - Sensing/Intuiting.  Each person is
supposedly primarily oriented to one of the above. 
And on top of this he layed another polarity:
Introvert/Extravert.  One needn't pick any of the
above, but doing so might prove useful.

Another opposite Jung presented was that of the
"Shadow," the archetype whose function is to "force"
on the subject a recongnition (and thus unification of
personality) of the dark, repressed aspect of his
persona.  With this opposite the very point is to
break down the artificial wall between the light and
dark aspects of the soul.

[big snip of good discussion]
> In the end, I don’t believe he thinks that it is OK
> to be a Manichean, but he seems to realize that
> people find it necessary to view the choices in
> life in a binary, dualistic, two-party fashion.
> What about oneness, though, does it exist at
> all?  
>    “‘. . . Perhaps you used a rifle, a radio, a
> typewriter.  Some typewriters in Whitehall, in
> the Pentagon, killed more civilians than our
> little A4 could ever have hoped to.  You
> are either alone absolutely, alone with your
> own death, or you take part in the larger
> enterprise, and you share in the
> deaths of others. Are we not all one?  Which
> is your choice . . . the little cart, or
> the great one. ”  [453.41 - 454.1-6, ellipses are
> mine]  Here, in Fahringer’s rant, we have an
> acceptance of individual guilt, a
> shuffling of blame to include everyone else,
> singularity, unification, inevitability, choice,
> force of circumstances, uncertainty, finality,
> individuality, universality, quibbles over
> matters of degree - everything, something, and
> nothing.  It is all, both, neither, none, and
> only one and it is us and Them. 
> Take your pick, but it might lead us to delusion or
> paranoia, if we do not think of these ways of
> dividing the world as anything but convenient,
> but insufficient, methods of coping with the
> enormity of life.

"Eternal truth needs a human language that alters with
the spirit of the times."
   C.G. Jung 


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