[Michael Bailey]

Mark Kohut wrote:
> Michael Bailey wrote:
>
> passing thought:
> (excessive) competition is the auto-immune disease of the polis ?????

> Wow, please elaborate--i.e. reduce its meaning from this maybe brilliant
> aphorism---to something
> I can "get".......if you can.

a) typical liberal anti-competitive bias on my part
(part sour grapes, part real preference for co-operative behaviors)

b) to the extent that there is a polis, a "common wealth",
we are all members one of another (naturally I'm snickering
at the Beavis 'n' Butthead implications of that, but also thinking
of John Donne's bell tolling for the losers, which includes the winners,
who I think were Jesus's target demographic in naming us as
"poor, miserable, blind and naked")

c) reasonable competition allows the development of
sportspersonship; excessive competition encourages
maximization instead of optimization, thoughtless and
inconsiderate behavior...decadence...stealing elections,
that sort of thing...

d) this all ties into Bodin (equating him with Pig Bodine
is a particular hobbyhorse of mine), the theologian and
witch-burner who made what I hail as a good point in
discouraging revolutions because social progresss depends
on political stability (simply put, in order to oust the evildoers,
one must become even more adept at doing evil, and then
when one achieves power, one's habits don't conduce to doing good.
Better far to immediately practice peace and soften the harsh regime.)

e) however, this really was a passing point (though thanks
for awarding it provisional brilliance - a status it may well
lose after this gloss) amid my explication of the Vlado-Yashmeen
whirlwind romance.  I have one more long (not onerously long, I hope)
post in me on that: it has quite thrilled me.  I know the whole
book is probably put together just as finely, but even in Pynchon,
knowing it's all good, sometimes a passage or section just shines.