Is it OK to be a Luddite?

[MalignD at aol.com]

I intended cranky to mean eccentric, as did Pynchon in the first paragraph of 
the essay itself.  The essay is full of dubious and unqualified assertions, 
some of which function as begged questions in his argument.  

He begins with a muddy discussion of C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures," writing in a 
paragraph that seems both wrong and at odds with itself:

"Today nobody could get away with making such a distinction [between literary 
and scientific].  Since 1959, we have come to live among flows of data more 
vast than anything the world has seen. ... We immediately suspect ego 
insecurity in people who may still try to hide behind the jargon of a 
specialty or pretend to some data base forever 'beyond' the reach of a 
layman."   

I would argue that more often the opposite is true, that the authority of the 
specialist is ascendant as is the respect accorded it.  

He goes on:  "Anybody with the time, literacy, and access fee can get 
together with just about any piece of specialized knowledge s/he may need.  
So, to that extent, the two-cultures quarrel can no longer be sustained."  

Access, time, and literacy, may facilitate getting together with specialized 
knowledge, but it is of scant help to the generalist in understanding it.

He then says:  "As a visit to any local library or magazine rack will easily 
confirm, there are now so many more than two cultures that the problem has 
really become how to find the time to read anything outside one's own 
specialty."  

So, unless I misunderstand, having argued that access has closed the gap 
between the two worlds, he now argues that the problem is many worlds, not 
merely two.  In general, the paragraph is incoherent.  

In any event, he soon drops this argument to discuss the history and myth of 
Ned Lud and the stocking frame and, from there, rapidly and somewhat 
aimlessly segues, via Byron's being a pro-Luddite, to Mary Shelley and 
Frankenstein, the origins of the gothic novel, and to modern science fiction, 
in the context of which he makes this remarkable comment:  

"This [genre novels being labeled "escapist fare"] is especially unfortunate 
in the case of science fiction, in which the decade after Hiroshima saw one 
of the most remarkable flowerings of literary talent and, quite often, 
genius, in our history.  It was just as important as the Beat movement going 
on at the same time, certainly more important than mainstream fiction, which 
with only a few exceptions had been paralyzed by the political climate of the 
cold war and McCarthy years."

I have no idea who he imagines these sci/fi geniuses to be, but a list of the 
"paralyzed" mainstream writers working in the fifties would without 
exhaustion include: Faulkner, Thomas Mann, Nabokov, Celine, Beckett, Flannery 
O'Conner, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Terry Southern, Ralph 
Ellison, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Flann 
O'Brien.

Then on to politics.  He writes:  "... Eisenhower prophesied when he left 
office, there is now a permanent power establishment of admirals, generals 
and corporate CEO's, up against whom us average poor bastards are completely 
outclassed ....  We are all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go on 
..."  Well, no; Eisenhower famously said to "beware" the military/industrial 
complex, not to "keep tranquil and allow it to go on."

He offers without comment that the factory system "had been extended to 
include the Manhattan project," which seems to me another questionable 
assertion.   The Manhattan project, however unfortunate its outcome, was 
mainly a harnessing of scientific talent in three countries to a specific 
project in very particular circumstances.  There was an assigning of roles 
and tasks, but that was undoubtedly true in the building of the pyramids and 
owes little to the technology of mass production. 

He says, in a paragraph with a reference to Auschwitz, "an unblinking 
acceptance of a holocaust running to seven- and eight-figure body counts has 
become -- among those who, particularly since 1980, have been guiding our 
military policies -- conventional wisdom," a reckless and inflammatory 
statement.  One doesn't like to be in the position of defending the members 
of our military establishment, but one must assume that by "holocaust," given 
the proximity of his reference to Auschwitz, Pynchon means systematic racial 
slaughter.  Whatever else I may think of him, I don't believe Colin Powell, 
say, morally equivalent to Hitler nor that he reckons the extermination of 
tens of millions without blinking an eye. 

He writes, again without qualification, "The word 'Luddite' continues to be 
applied with contempt to anyone with doubts about technology, especially the 
nuclear kind," an odd claim.  The term has never been in common parlance (in 
the article itself Pynchon asks "what is a Luddite, anyway?") and, just as 
often, I would venture, it is nuclear advocates and not those with doubts who 
are deemed out of step with the times.

As to Luddites today, Pynchon writes:  "What is the outlook for Luddite 
sensibility?  Will mainframes attract the same hostile attention as knitting 
frames once did?  I really doubt it," a conclusion that renders irrelevant 
most of what the article purports to be about.. 

There's more, but that's most of it.