GRGR(23): Mondaugen's Law

[David Morris]

>From: Jeremy Osner <jeremy at xyris.com>
>"Personal density," sez Mondaugen, quoted on GR 509, "is directly
>proportional to temporal bandwidth." Meaning, as I understand it, the
>wider your sense of "present", the more intensely present you are.

It seems to me that you are twisting Mondaugen's Law by equating the terms 
"personal density" and "more intensely present."  I think that the result of 
greater personal density is less emotional involvement in the present moment 
in light of the overall scope of the whole picture.  It means becoming more 
like Mondaugen, the Nazi-Bodhisattva, which may be good or may be bad.  
Personal actions performed in the consciousness of the big picture SHOULD 
result in more responsible action, but the futility of changing the world in 
the long run (and of course let's not forget one's personal death) might 
also result in a fuck-it-all mentality.

As I've referenced earlier, TP gives us an example later of a being with an 
extremely large temporal bandwidth:

``Felipe is kneeling out in the sun, making his noontime devotionals to the 
living presence of a certain rock back in the wasteland of La Rioja, on the 
eastern slopes of the Andes. According to an Argentine
legend from the last century, Maria Antonia Correa followed her lover into 
that arid land, carrying their newborn child. Herders found her a week 
later, dead. But the infant had survived, by nursing from her
corpse. Rocks near the site of the miracle have since been the objects of 
yearly pilgrimages. But Felipe's particular rock embodies also an 
intellectual system, for he believes (as do M. F. Beal and others) in a form 
of mineral consciousness not too much different
from that of plants and animals, except for the time scale. Rock's time 
scale is a lot more stretched out. `We're talking frames per century,' 
Felipe like everybody else here lately has been using a bit of movie 
language, `per millennium!' Colossal. But Felipe has come to see, as those 
who are not Sentient Rocksters seldom do, that history as it's been laid on 
the world is only a fraction, an outward-and-visible fraction. That we must 
also look to the untold, to the silence around us, to the passage of the 
next rock we notice - to its aeons of history under the long and female 
persistence of water and air (who'll be there, once or twice per century, to 
trip the shutter?), down to the lowland where your paths, human and mineral,
are most likely to cross....'' Pynchon (1973, p.612-613).

Slothrop very often embodies the "pure action" of not thinking about 
anything but the present moment, you know, the "Be Here Now" thing.  Which 
again, may be good or may be bad.  It is how he is also the embodiment of 
the tarot of "The Fool,"  which kai very eloquently interpreted earlier.  In 
the context of personal bandwidth the description of the card below is of 
value:

http://www.trail.com/~tlittle/excursions/tarot/hfool.htm
In the tarot sequence, the Fool represents the lowest rung of worldly 
status. (In fact, he is not on the ladder at all!) He corresponds to the 
beggar (misero) in the Tarocchi of Mantegna. He is the very antithesis of 
power and achievement. He is without accomplishment, without influence, 
without even the necessities of self-preservation. He stands in contrast to 
the first numbered trump, the Bagatto or Juggler. This character has learned 
to use his wits to attain some modicum of control over his environment. The 
Fool, on the other hand, has no capacity for the Bagatto's opportunistic 
type of cleverness. The Fool lives moment to moment, connecting to his 
physical environment through his emotions and moods. He is also poised in 
contrast to the Pope, the highest of the figures of human society depicted 
in the tarot. The tarot was created in the late Renaissance, as the seeds of 
the Reformation were beginning to emerge. No doubt there was a consciousness 
of the hypocrisy of the Pope, who preached humility but wielded enormous 
wealth and political power. The Fool is a counterpoint to the Pope, 
powerless but ironically closer to God.

The Fool is free from past and future.  He LIVES.  One more related GR 
quote, back in the lab before the rats leave their cages and perform that 
great dance, their keeper laments:

(230.30) "I would set you free, if I knew how.  But it isn't free out there. 
[snip] I can't even give you hope that it will be different someday - that 
They'll come out, and forget death, and lose Their
technology's elaborate terror, and stop using every form of life without 
mercy to keep what haunts men down to a tolerable level - and be like you 
instead, simply here, simply alive...."

David Morris



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