Innocence lost / innovations = bad

[Monte Davis]

Dan sez:
 
>  we could benefit from looking at that as a general, progressive
strenghtening of our human  
>  bodies, albeit w/ certain atrocious losses along the way.  What an
incredible balance that is, geez  
 
 I'd push it a step further and suggest that the very idea of balance here,
maybe even the word "progressive," risk smuggling in notions of providence,
of some kind of Edenic equilibrium (past or future) that is more "natural"
than disruption and extinction. In fact the "atrocious losses" are every bit
as much part of (even essential to) the whole process as any idealized
steady state. The "strengthening" isn't a benefit that comes to any given
human body; it's a statistical shift over time, manifest only as the
"weaker" fail to leave descendants.
 
As we've discussed here before, Pynchon usually aligns himself with the
former (Hereros and the dodo in GR, the American Indians in M&D, the
"African gods' revenge" riff coming up on p. 777). But sometimes something
chillier,. more Darwinian, peeks through: "lovable but *scatterbrained*
Mother Nature" in GR, or Frank and Wren on 277-278 pondering what homegrown
horrors might lave long preceded the arrival of Europeans.  
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