douglas fowler

[Terrance]

Terrance wrote:
> 
> Otto wrote:
> > >
> >
> > Yes, of course, because "it" has become some self-running "machine" - it's
> > not the "Christians" but the pureley economical world that has been shaped
> > by Western Civilisation. Nobody controls it anymore.

Here is a good example on pages 56 & 81 of GR. 

The Reverend Dr. Paul de la Nuit. 

He's out drinking with Roger. It's very important that the Vicar is
drunk. Why? 
Because in this altered state we get a revelation (a common theme in P's
fiction from the Short stories on). The priest says something
remarkable. He tells Roger a story about how the Romans laid a sieve on
the road and used the stalks that grew through it to cure the sick. Oh
boy! Magic! But Roger doesn't get it. No more than Pointy gets or will
accept or believe in his poisoned statistical equations and numbers. The
priest, it seems, who is also a doctor, and he participates in the
discussions at the lab, comes up with this tale while drunk, but he too
is distorted by science and the War. He tries to oppose Rosie on the
MMPI (page 81), but his meekness is politic, his words empty of the
Christian act of naming and of parable, so that his objections, 

Human values? Trust, honesty, love? is all measured, put on a religious
scale and measured. He wants, and the irony here is very poignant, only
a broader test that will include larger areas of the human personality.
He's a priest and a doctor,  after all. And there is a war going on. And
as Pointsman reminds him, good soldiers are much in demand these days. 

The War reconfigures time and space, a demiurge shaping the universe in
own image, it   distorts the very axis upon which human relations turn.
But it is not in control and it is not some machine, some automation
driven toward extinction that is stripping humanity of trust, honesty,
love, human values. 

Happy are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.