Misc. All those mirrors in TRP?

[Ian Livingston]

Still, the gradient between self-centered greed and capitalist
contributions to social sustainability remains undefined. I wonder if
P's mirrors aren't a way of suggesting a little moral introspection.
What does a Bill Gates see when he takes a deeply honest personal
accounting? or any of the crew Michael Moore featured in his take on
the current banking crisis? etc. Surely these people see themselves as
the good guys, even though they hoard 99% of the nation's wealth. My
own conscience wiggles under my paltry debt, but what must the
conscience of the ultra-rich do when its corpus looks out at its work?
Is a mirror enough? I mean, I have little doubt Pynchon was aware of
Ike's last state of the union address--could he have been suggesting
reconnoitering within a dangerous trend?

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 3:30 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A fine universal ramble inmo Michael Bailey.....
>
> Yes...........
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Fri, January 28, 2011 1:21:15 AM
> Subject: Re: Misc. All those mirrors in TRP?
>
> sorry to go on and on, but it just seems like a lot of the time when
> people whose viewpoints I admire talk about current events they say
> things that tend to make me panic
>
> and if panic could mobilize me quickly and make me more effective,
> that would be fine
>
> but I'm one of these step by step buttheads and panic slows me down
> (does it really actually speed anybody up) and I need to construct a
> headspace to work within
>
> so I was pleased enough with this one to go on and on about it:
>
> the physical universe is like, vast enough to contain the problem, my
> take on it, everything I'm likely to do, all the consequences of any
> success or failure I and everybody I know will ever have dealing with
> it, and still have plenty of room for lots of other occurrences that
> have nothing to do with any of the above; not only that --- that which
> I call "me" might be different than what I think it is, even, ya know?
>
> the biological fact is we are finite creatures bounded in space and
> time (well, maybe I will never reach an upper bound of my healthy
> timespan, and I certainly wish all of you the same) and each of us is
> part of a long term process which is often cataclysmic and only tiny
> parts of which are ever under our control to any extent, so nobody has
> any respect, and anyway they already expect you all to give a check to
> tax-deductible charity organizations...
>
> within our culture, there are like, bell curves galore of all kinds of
> characteristics, numerous situations going on of which Tyson chicken
> or government corruption or authoritarian personalities are only a
> couple of which, although within a cultural perspective it's possible
> to order things by a variety of schemes...again only some of which
> I've even heard of and only a couple of which I might have a smidgen
> of facility with, but no harm in trying...and also, safety in numbers,
> somebody'll probably figure it out if I don't, which (ymmv) doesn't
> make me lie back, but encourages me to keep trying and to keep abreast
> of other efforts by others
>
> and so back to economics, 10 dollars of my discretionary income goes
> to such and such a cause (Fellowship of Reconciliation, W.A.S.T.E,
> Arbor Day Foundation, Amnesty International, so forth) and you know, a
> couple grand a year on consumer items etcetera, all of which I
> deliberate over.
>
> all of which gives a certain sense of scale of what my efforts amount
> to in the grand scheme of things.  But, you know, one like, rejoices
> at the notion that there is indeed a grand scheme of things and by
> deduction, a grand scheme is set up with like, many interesting
> surprises at every step...
>
> anyway, still not being very clear, but maybe giving an idea of some sort?
>
>
>
>
>



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