Chapter 5: Paranoia: Would history have been different?

[Scott Badger]

Because I'm lazy...something I posted back in MDMD '97:

> ....A world going through a
> transition of reality - old magic to new.  The new "reality" being one
> of straight lines, divisions, borders and a deterministic science - a
> reduction of the uncertainty of old.  Lines are being drawn (chains of
> cause and effect) that, though but a close approximation of the
> underlying world - a map, allow for far more extended, and remote,
> control.  The arc of a snow-ball to become the parabola of a rocket.

To my reading, paranoia is the human response to - the condition resulting
from - this progressive mechanization of the World.  The plots we create
(authenticity being irrelevant) serve as simple myths that we use to
textualize (or maybe, to map...) this "sense" of paranoia.

I think the "Seahorse incident" and Mason & Dixon's suspicions, while
serving the above function, takes us through a sort of moebius loop to an
anti-paranoid consideration of history as well.  Again, would another Line,
though apparently different in name only, have played the same historical
role? You know, that Butterfly effect...

Scott Badger