von Braun in the Rainbow

[Michael Bailey]

On 1/3/08, David Morris noted:

> Rather mild as ad hominems go, especially on this list....
>

Yeah, true to my resolution, I did trim and edit both posts, but not enough...

The "class which includes himself" mot would have been a good place to stop.

But even with editing, sometimes I have the makings of better thoughts than
I actually end up writing -- here's an attempt at one:

I'd like to encapsulate Dyson's statement
of WvB's bombardment of London not interfering with
business as usual (which business for many
Londonians, as noted in GR, was "plotting death")
in a wrapper which includes 2 different mental states and a boundary:

1) a sympathetic reliving of time past - within which
it's callous to dismiss anybody's suffering as unimportant.

2) an accounting of broader trends in history - within which individual
fates are as bits in a digital word - as noted in _Vineland_, and
related there to the concept of an angel. ("...or minor god, or
something in a UFO" p90)  (so I posit here, an identity
between angel and idea, at least in some senses, that I think
opens all kinds of doors between religion, spiritualism, and more
conventional thought -- but anyway...)

I'd venture both viewpoints are valid, both are necessary, and
it's hard to hold both at the same time --

If I adopt an angel-view, the details of the individuals lose resolution
and this feels like abandonment.  Even Pynchon's
angel-statement might seem "insufferable" -- that was actually among
my reactions to the passage...
"damn those historical trends,
they are making mincemeat of me and my friends" (hey, that rhymes)

But it's pretty inevitable to form interpretations
when given details.

there's a techie-spectrum of actions among those
faced with the possibility of collaborating in high-tech WMD:

Rosenbergs - sell to the other side (actually they may not have, but anyway...)
Oppenheimer - quote Hindu scripture
PMS Blackett - protest ever-so-mildly and face Congressional wrath
Dyson - stay viable and work within the system

Within that spectrum it seems reasonable that Dyson
focus on the trend-picture while recalling the times, passim,
within a book review, though he may have other viewpoints
for other occasions.


But where is that boundary I promised?  What prompts a person
to take the long or the close-up view?  Is there a code, written or
unwritten, somewhere, of when to allow ourselves to feel sympathy
beyond perfunctory?

(Or, in Pynchon's books, what are the salient points when OBA
changes focus?)

If angels are, instead of ideas, "objects" as in programming,
with an attribute of sympathy -- there would be rules as to when
sympathy would come into play.
Pynchon ideas mostly don't exclude sympathy (that's
why I like him so much) -- he's actively seeking angels
that would hear people if they shriek...



-- 
Peace on earth, to men of good will