MDMD Chapter 5: Paranoia

[Paul Mackin]

Would it be overstepping to take the Hmmm as having reference to the peace
movement in the current situation?
"Reality is too strong for [it]."

Freud is very severe with regard to anything SPIRITUAL which I think the
peace movement can be said to be.

If I misread you I apologize--haven't read Chapter 5 yet.
(recently that is)
        P.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Nightingale" <paulngale at supanet.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: MDMD Chapter 5: Paranoia


>
> From Sigmund Freud's Civilisation and its Discontents (Harmondsworth:
> Penguin, 1991 ed, p269).
>
> "The hermit turns his back on the world and will have no truck with it.
But
> one can do more than that; one can try to recreate the world, to build up
in
> its stead another world in which its most unbearable features are
eliminated
> and replaced by others that are in conformity with one's own wishes. But
> whoever, in desperate defiance sets out upon this path to happiness will
as
> a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him. He becomes a madman,
> who for the most part finds no one to help him in carrying through his
> delusion. It is asserted, however, that each one of us behaves in some one
> respect like a paranoic, corrects some aspect of the world that is
> unbearable to him by the construction of a wish and introduces this
delusion
> into reality. A special importance attaches to the case in which this
> attempt to secure a certainty of happiness and a protection against
> suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is made by a
> considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must be
> classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say,
who
> shares a delusion ever recognises it as such."
>
> Hmmm ...
>