VV(18): Decadence

[Dave Monroe]

"'Porcepic,' grinned the tailor, 'you'll be surprised one day.  At what we 
will do.'"
   "'Nothing surprises me,' answered Porcepic.  'If history were cyclical, 
we'd now be in a decadence, would we not, and your projected revolution only 
another symptom of it.'"
   "'A decadence is a falling-away,' said Kholsky.  'We rise.'"
   "'A decadence,' Itague put in, 'is a falling-away from what is human, and 
the further we fall the less human we become.  Because we are less human, we 
foist off the humanity we have lost on inanimate objects and abstract 
theories.'"
   [...]
   "'Your beliefs are non-human,' he said.  'You talk of people as if they 
were point-clusters, or curves on a graph.'"
   "'So they are,' mused Kholsky, dreamy-eyed. [...] No matter.  The 
Socialist Awareness grows, the tide is irresistible and irreversible.[...] 
all in accord with the basic rhythms of History.  Perhaps she is a woman; 
women are a mystery to me.  But her ways are at least measurable."  (V., Ch. 
14, Sec. ii, p. 405)

Note, of course, that Kholsky, "a huge and homicidal tailor," "entered as 
the sun fell, hidden by yellow clouds" (ibid.).  "Ulyanov," by the way, is, 
of course, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a.k.a. V.I. Lenin; Bakunin and Marx are 
of course more obvious.  Interestingly, it's the anti-semite Itague who 
seemingly voices the most sympathetic lines here.  But keep in mind just 
what his definition of "human" might include or exclude, and that, later, 
"Nazi Science" would denigrate "abstract theories," say, theoretical vs. 
experimental science, as "Jewish science," see, e.g., ...

Walker, Mark.  Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and
   the German Atomic Bomb.  New York: Plenum, 1995.

But still ... well interesting, is all.  And, while the immediate target (of 
Itague's, at least) here might be Socialism, Communism, ultimately, 
Stalinism, do note that "talk of people as if they were point-clusters, or 
curves on a graph."  See here, e.g., ...

Desrosires, Alain.  The Politics of Large Numbers:
   A History of Statistical Reasoning.  Trans. Camille
   Haish.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998.

Though this isn't quite the title I 'm trying to recall.  Sorry, running a 
little ragged here ...


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