"...self-serving, self-perpetuating oligarchies."

[Mark Kohut]

Just a remark within the AtD framework--and vision of Pynchon?

Is he largely 'against', so to speak, "complex systems" as used below?
Does he not hold 'simple systems--European villages, small towns, community-sized groups--up as ideals?


--- On Mon, 10/13/08, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: "...self-serving, self-perpetuating oligarchies."
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Monday, October 13, 2008, 1:41 AM
> bandwraith wrote:
>  It's the term "oligarchies" that raises huge
> questions- very
> >  relevant to fiction, especially to ATD.
> >
> >  It is an open question whether a complex system can
> self-perpetuate
> >  without being oligarchical, Even ignoring (at our
> peril) ecological
> >  considerations, for the moment, a complex system,
> i.e., one with
> >  multiple subsystems forming some kind of
> recognizeable cooperative
> >  identity (self-serving) that self-perpetuates...? Can
> it happen
> >  "successfully" without some kind of
> hierarchy? Reef fucks Cyprian
> >  but Cyprian doesn't fuck Reef, etc.- probably
> not.
> 
> 
> aha, but isn't that what creates the instability? 
> perhaps not...
> 
> it does seem reasonable that in a system *viewed as a
> system*,
> certain functions become habitual to certain members
> 
> hierarchy doesn't seem to be much use, though, in a
> good system:
> are the kidneys more important than the bowels?
> More important is the ability to work, together
> harmoniously,
> to share resources -- isn't it?  If one kidney cell
> monopolized all
> the adrenaline,
> it wouldn't thereby be aggrandizing itself, au
> contraire, it would be
> interfering with good co-operation.
> 
> But is this sub-systemic co-operation necessarily
> "subservient" to
> some "superior" class entity - such as the
> organism, the society, the
> ecosystem -
> or does it (one might opine) actually underlie and create
> them,
> and in some sense, then, itself exert superiority?
> 
> although as good co-operators they
> are not really into that superiour-inferiour duality
> ...so maybe, say, they find it more fruitful to make
> themsevles indispensible
> by not proclaiming their own hegemony...instead by
> performing useful tasks
> 
> >  I think I'll go out and play a few holes of
> anarchist golf and mull it
> > over.
> >
> >
> 
> sounds like fun!  meet you at the i+5 hole...