Routing for the body count

[MJ Cheeseman]

The Don DeLillo debate is suddenly given a depth charge.

----- Original Message -----
From: <Mutualcode at aol.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 12:24 PM
Subject: Routing for the body count


> It's okay. It's alright. It doesn't make you Timotthy McVeigh or put you
on
> the FBI's most wanted. It's not altogether abnormal- these secret
pleasures-
> the possibility of the toll being higher than Pearl Harbor- or
> disappointments- fewer than expected at the Pentagon. Inspite of the heaps
of
> abuse gleefully piled on Freud he was as much right as he was wrong, but
> certain phenomenon cannot be reduced to simple causes- or stay reduced for
> long. The gathering together is ineluctable.
>
> In this apogee of uncertainty, before the true body count becomes known,
> while it is still unclear where to draw the line between subject and
object,
> us and them, the living and the dead- it might help to acknowledge that as
> necessary as that line may be- in order "to be"- where exactly to make
that
> "epistemic cut" is largely arbitrary. Like all observation and
measurement,
> it's just a matter of time.
>
> Life might be defined as the ability and the need to make arbitrary
> distinctions. Where that need and ability come from is a sublime miracle
that
> no amount of objectivity can make sense of.
>
> One doesn't have to hate inorde to avoid feeling guilty. Routing for the
body
> count, whether one is conscious of it or not, is complementary with
survivor
> guilt. The two are not mutually exclusive, except by an unhealthy act of
> repression. Association with the aggressor is another related phenomenon,
> described, but not entirely explained by, the need to make arbitrary
> distinctions. And numbers are arbitrary, fueled by the video game-like
media
> circus, and the emotional distance it can produce.
>
> Sadness is okay, too.
>