ahab as luddite

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

I am with you completely, but there is no stopping it. It has already
achieved an Agency of its own. It promised us immortality and made
us slaves. The usual con game.


In a message dated 2/1/02 4:58:05 AM, lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de writes:

<< ahab's destruction of the quadrant (chapter 118), though perhaps not 
"luddite" 

 in the classical sense, is condemning modern technology for its misleading  

 promise of control and the corresponding social inequality: "'foolish toy! 

 babies' plaything of haughty admirals, and commodores, and captains; the 
world 

 brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what after all canst thou do, 
but 

 tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest to be on this 
wide  

 planet, and the hand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! thou canst not 
tell 

 where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet 
  

 with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! science! curse thee, thou vain 
toy 

 ..." hallways of pynchonian echoes here ... let's stop bio-technology now!


kai frederik //:: ps: on 4/22/40 klaus mann wrote into his diary: "in 'moby 

                  dick'. herman melville -: ein 'grosser amerikaner', der mir 

                  noch unbekannt war. grosser, rhetorisch-poetischer stil. 

                  sowohl thomas wolfe als auch joseph conrad scheinen, auf 

                  verschiedenen umwegen, von ihm her zu kommen ..." yesterday 
i 

                  read the epilogue ~~~ ~~~ ~~~