Ch 14 306-315 revisited

[Joseph Tracy]

On Apr 1, 2009, at 4:21 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> Thoughts on the revelatory power of hallucinogens? What is TRP  
>> getting at?
>
>
> Could be Pynchon's jocular way of explaining the failure of the  
> revolution.
>
> If it depended on hallucination it wasn't likely to succeed.
>
> VL is not kind to youthful revolutionaries.
>
> On the other hand perhaps the dream is enough.
>
> Doesn't one sometimes get that feeling in AtD?
>

I have been thinking about what you say here and I see something more  
complicated. I know the dangers and potential destructiveness of drugs 
( passivity, addiction, physical debilitation) but drugs are not what  
I see as the essential focus here. The focus is the moment of  
transcendent enlightenment  when the person sees the the continuity  
of life and spirit as  real and the self and body as temporary  
vessels. Language is inadequate but Zoyd puts his experience in  
powerful terms. This kind of event takes many forms but often marks a  
dramatic turn in the life of an individual and the beginning of a  
larger worldview.  The great leaders of social change almost all  
describe such a process or moment. It is this fearless sense of  
transcendent power that has often activated movements, organizations  
and  moments of change. Violent revolutions have never brought the  
promised changes fully to fruition because a meaningful revolution  
requires  a far reaching transformation of consciousness. Every power  
arrangement is corruptible if there is not a shared and guiding sense  
of direction or deeply shared principles.

I am not comparing Zoyd to Gandhi but his experience gives him a  
powerful resistance to  fear tactics and to bitterness or hate, and  
he is one of the few characters here to have moments of happiness:  
hanging with and caring for Prairie, finding a sense of home in  
Vineland, the harmony, rhythm, and playfulness of music. . But the  
whole effect which LSD, eastern mysticism, earth mysticism  and the  
questioning and rejection of the military, racial , gender and social  
power arrangements all had  on the 60's generation was much more than  
a hallucination. The real danger for Nixon and the cultural  
imperialists was the vision of a new kind of world and the demand  
that the promises of democratic ideals become real.   The danger for  
the  revolutionaries was that like South Africa, they would win power  
and fail to adequately continue the deeper process of change needed  
to realize the dreams of justice and shared prosperity.( not judging  
here, just noting that there is along way to go.)

In some ways this settles nothing, because there is the question as  
to whether any revolutionary change can be more than a hallucination.  
Is entropy the final word in the universe? Bucky Fuller proposed that  
intelligence is anti-entropic. If so consciousness  and the greatest  
possible accuracy about  our ecological and spiritual framework is  
the true battle ground of every change.

Right now in the US the battle is intense because the shift that is  
needed to survive with any kind of human grace is  obscured by the  
lusts of power and greed  and fear that hobble both the poor and  
powerful.