Mondaugen's_Law

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> --- Mike Weaver wrote:
> > >> Mondaugen's law (from memory): Personal density
> is
> > >>directly proportional to temporal bandwidth.
> > >> This IMO is Pynchon's direct challenge to the
> whole
> > >> Be Here Now mentality.[snip]

The "Law" is explained on GR.509, good memory Mike, it's
always easier to remember things we know the meaning of. You
have got it right. Why is this Mondaugen's Law after all.
"The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the
thicker your bandwidth." (What happens to Slothrop's
Bandwidth in GR?) "It is the familiar 'deta-t' considered as
a dependent variable. The more you dwell in the past and in
the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more SOLID YOUR
PERSONA. (MY CAPS, a solid persona is one of GR main themes,
who has one in the novel? all these characters merging into
each other 2bles and film and mindless pleasures do not) But
the narrower your sense of the Now, the more tenuous you
are. It may get you to where you're having trouble
remembering what you were doing five minutes ago, or
even--as Slothrop now--what you're doing here, at the base
of this colossal curved embankment...." 

    Now, this is a great example of how Pynchon's irony can
confuse the hell out of the reader. First, what has
Mondaugen's past got to do with this? Pokler is not sure, is
he? He knows that there is some connection between Mondaugen
and Weissmann and Africa. But we know. We know what happened
out there and Mondaugen knows. So now, Pynchon makes
Mondaugen a "bodhisattva" (very 60s) electro-mystic who, in
moments of perfect serenity, finds the pure, informationless
state of signal ZERO. Why? Too long to quote now, see
GR.403-404. 

Here we have Pynchon's ironic treatment of religion and sex,
S&M mostly, and Mondaugen's Story. Got to read it to make
sense of these GR chapters. Pynchon understands world
religion better than your average 60s enthusiast, and enough
to use it for his ironic purposes.  Pynchon knows about the
principle of SUNYATA. Voidness--or Nothingness, Dharmakaya, 
Buddhanature, Buddha-mind, Suchness, Tathata, Tathatagarbha,
or Dharmadhatu, which is a generalization of the three
original marks or predicates, attributed to existence by
early Buddhism--these are suffering, impermanence, and NO
SELF. One of the ironies, and there are so many, is that
Sunyata, on an ethical level becomes the principle of
absolute compassion or Karuna, but it is also the principle
of the ABSOLUTE existential indifference underlying the
prominent theme of "expedient means" or UPAYA, the
stock-in-trade of the bodhisattvas. 

BTW, the bodhisattva would go with Freud and
Nietzsche--operationalists and not with the neo Freudian's
here--Brown, Jung, and the other dialecticians--Hegel,
Sartre.