MDDM Ch. 70 Prolegomena

[Terrance]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> >From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
> >You can blame religion for all our problems, but that's no different than
> >blaming man and women for all our problems. Kinda like what the Ancient
> >Jews came up when their world went wrong. You can blame Christianity if you
> >like, but it's a fools argument, it's  a sophomore's rant,  bombastic
> >polemics indeed. In M&D, Pynchon puts this sophomore's rant where it
> >belongs, in the mouth of a young lad home from college.
> 
> I think the above is a silly statement.  Pynchon could very well have
> identified with this young lad's sentiments when he wrote M&D.  He is in no
> way ridiculed in the text.

Not sure, but a good point. Out of the mouths of Babes? Some say P puts
his most profound thoughts in the mouths of kids or babes. Paola was a
Babe, I think. 


I wonder, what do you make of Mason's horse? 
Creeping Nick? Is that it? Nick, as in D---l? Back at Chapter 40
(Paul/Saul & Co) Ethelmer wants to say something about the Devil.


A lot of lines tangled around that horse. And eating too. 

The RC seems to have a pretty good idea about all this. 



Some say P puts his most profound thoughts in the mouth of an old man. 
Not sure about that either. 


http://www.focusing.org/apm.htm

What postmodernism teaches is not new. Heraclitus said, "You cannot step
into the same river twice" and his student added, "not even once, since
there is no same river." The ancient Eristics showed the unreliability
of logic alone. 



http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/james.htm

A pragmatist turns his back resolutely  upon a lot of
inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from
abstraction
and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons,
from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and
origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts,
towards action and towards power. That means the empiricist temper
regnant and the rationalist temper sincerely given up. It means the open
air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality, and
the pretence of finality in truth.