TPPM (9): "The Future of Sloth"

[Dave Monroe]

   "Is some kind of change already in the offing? ...

[...]

   "Sure, but is it Sloth? [...] Channel-surfing and
VCR-jockeying may require a more nonlinear awareness
than may be entirely compatible with the venerable sin
of Sloth -- some inner alertness or tension, as of
someone sitting in a yoga posture, or in Zen
meditation. Is Sloth once more about to be, somehow,
transcended? Another possibility of course is that we
have not passed beyond acedia at all, but that it has
only retreated from its long-familiar venue,
television, and is seeking other, more shadowy
environments -- who knows? computer games, cult
religions, obscure trading floors in faraway cities --
ready to pop up again in some new form to offer us
cosmic despair on the cheap.
   "Unless the state of our souls becomes once more a
subject of serious concern, there is little question
that Sloth will continue to evolve away from its
origins in the long-ago age of faith and miracle, when
daily life really was the Holy Ghost visibly at work
and time was a story, with a beginning, middle and
end. Belief was intense, engagement deep and fatal.
The Christian God was near. Felt. Sloth -- defiant
sorrow in the face of God's good intentions -- was a
deadly sin.
   "Perhaps the future of Sloth will lie in sinning
against what now seems increasingly to define us --
technology. Persisting in Luddite sorrow, despite
technology's good intentions, there we'll sit with our
heads in virtual reality, glumly refusing to be
absorbed in its idle, disposable fantasies, even those
about superheroes of Sloth back in Sloth's good old
days, full of leisurely but lethal misadventures with
the ruthless villains of the Acedia Squad."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-sloth.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_sloth.html

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/sloth.html

http://www.vheissu.org/bio/eng_sloth.htm


"a more nonlinear awareness"

Again, see ...

Cubitt, Sean.  Timeshift: On Video.
   New York: Routledge, 1991.   

http://www.frontlist.com/detail/0415016789


"a yoga posture"

http://www.yogasite.com/postures.html


"Zen meditation"

http://www.mro.org/zmm/meditation/

http://www.sotozen-net.or.jp/kokusai/howtodozazen01.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/bodhidharma/zazen.html


"the Holy Ghost"

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07409a.htm

Cf. ...

Paraclete
472; one called up to support or aid another; used as
a title of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter; "Paracletian
politics," 479-80

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/p-q.html#paraclete


"time was a story, with a beginning, middle and end"

Wilcox, Donald J.  Measure of Times Past:
   Pre-Newtonian Chronologies and the Rhetoric
   of Relative Time.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/2558.ctl


"the future of Sloth"

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/luddite.html

http://www.vheissu.org/bio/eng_ludd.htm


		
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