GR translation: demolition man

[Markekohut]

related: from a book review. " In part 2, "Dr. Kahn (a psychiatrist) shows how the rise  of intelligence correlates with angst in modern civilization." 

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On Nov 11, 2012, at 5:19 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Knowledge of death might be the original sin.
> Lack of omniscience is the root of Paranoia.
> 
> Thinking is far from an ideal way of acquiring knowledge of the world.  It would be better if we were omniscient.  Like God, say.  No need for  crude rationality.
>> 
>> 
>> Seems to me having no knowledge of death would just be one more pornography.  A pornography of ignorance.  It would be much like the pornography of capitalist expression (as Leni's circle view things).  It would promote an unwarranted contentment.  Not least of all a diminished  revolutionary resolve.
>> 
>> P
>> 
>>> 
>>> David Morris
>>> 
>>> On Saturday, November 10, 2012, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>> On 11/10/2012 11:14 AM, David Morris wrote:
>>>> I don't think Pynchon is valuing rational over superstitious.  GR takes the question of both quite seriously. And he also implies that both spring from an internal mechanism that is basic to human thought.
>>> 
>>> Yes, in this case the superstitious interpretation of the coffee tin correctly announces Katje.
>>> 
>>> I guess I thought that, given the framework of Kabbalistic myth and the expected inversion thereof,  I saw sympathetic magic, based as it is on the assumption that a person or thing can be supernaturally affected through its name or an object representing it, as a perversion of testing Pudding's purity at the second antechamber.  Of course the thing you have to put alongside is that even the very purest in another person's religion is seen as a             superstition from the outside. So maybe we have a perversion of a perversion.  Pudding correctly accessed  his fate but by impure means.
>>> 
>>> Ad infinitum. 
>>> 
>>> P
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Friday, November 9, 2012, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>>> On 11/8/2012 2:02 AM, jochen stremmel wrote:
>>>> I think what Pynchon refers to here is more general, not only in the
>>>> context of WW II or the high and low contact. It's about "a repetition
>>>> high and low", low like the malignant pun a filthy, mocking scoundrel
>>>> might make and high like a sympathetic magic.
>>>> 
>>>> It's about playing with words and images, similes, metaphors. Like the
>>>> demolition man and the Trembler he sees in a spoon between a glass and
>>>> a plate, if he has to do the dishes.
>>>> Going beyond the specific examples, we might want also to note that this superstitious and magical thinking is meant to exemplify impurity, the opposite of what the second level is supposed to produce or demonstrate?
>>>> 
>>>> Thinking that contact of the spoon with the cup might produce an explosion--or that a coffee brand name by mere name association will bring forth a cruel lady--are pollutions of thought. (of course in this case there IS a cruel lady)
>>>> 
>>>> And outside the Kabbalistic framework, the interrelatedness of all things for the paranoiac is suggested.  To the paranoiac everything is connected.  At least in Pynchon. Not sure how that applied to Pudding, but still . . . .
>>>> 
>>>> P
>>>> 
>>>> 2012/11/7 Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>:
>>>> Jochen is correct about “demolition man” in  general, but in a WWII context
>>>> I think it means Explosive Ordnance Disposal,  someone who *disarms* bombs.
>>>> A “trembler” is a vibration-sensitive switch, its central tongue (an
>>>> electrical contact) closing the circuit if it touches either the “high”
>>>> contact above or the “low” contact beneath.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
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