Re: BEER ch 88,89—Beyond Good and Evil

[Fiona Shnapple]

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human
beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of
millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled
‘good’ or ‘bad’(1). But secondly — and this is much more important — I
mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other
unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty
than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be
confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a
way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw
a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing
ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular
place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best
in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is
of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism,
on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The
abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more
prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he
has chosen to sink his own individuality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_Nationalism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpRKstHl7Y0&list=PL19E47075893D110E


On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 5:26 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/the-lint-of-the-material
>
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 5:24 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 8:22 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Damn, that Sloth essay is mandatory re-reading in the reflected light
>>> of BE. Wish I'd gone back to it sooner.
>>>
>>> (And just listened to the Slate podcast several have linked to here -
>>> it's worth it! I disagree with much of what's said but it's passionate
>>> and playful and articulates many of the objections to the novel in a
>>> way that I found illuminating, as someone who likes it)
>>>
>>> Re: Johnny Mnemonic, I think it was Mr Kohut who noted William
>>> Gibson's Twitter response to hearing about the film's mention (along
>>> the lines of "really?!?")
>>>
>>> Is Felix's last name a reference to Oingo Boingo? I only know the band
>>> by name but they're mentioned in the same breath as Spike Jones and
>>> Frank Zappa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oingo_Boingo
>>>
>>> Also Boing Boing is a very popular geek culture website that has been
>>> around for ~25 years (began as an offline zine I think). Very pop
>>> technology stuff.
>>>
>>> Drawing a line to P's time at Boeing? Maybe too much.
>>>
>>> Felix is Latin for happy or lucky. Happy Boeing? Oh. Maybe he is the
>>> ghost of a young P who once thought he could work for a tech company
>>> and pretend that the technology itself was neutral...
>>>
>>> Back to that podcast - the speaker who hated the novel states at the
>>> start that she didn't get into BE's overt anti-technology theme, which
>>> left me thinking "what anti-technology theme?" Did anyone else get
>>> that from the novel? P's work doesn't suggest that technology is
>>> neutral, but as the Sloth essay indicates neither is his knee
>>> a-jerking in a particular technology's direction.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 12:00 AM, Michael Bailey
>>> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> > Remember all those funky stamps in CoL49? Made me think of tax stamps,
>>>>> > for stock trades. Like all those old "Pynchon & Co." tax stamps.
>>>>
>>>> Here're some (but who's Raymond?)
>>>> http://1898revenues.blogspot.com/2012/07/new-york-stock-brokers-raymond-pynchon.html?m=1
>>>>
>>>>>Internet trades are not taxed per transaction. They really, really should
>>>>> be, you know.
>>>>
>>>> - easy to administer, collect, even if they dampened trading a bit they
>>>> probably could replace all other taxation. Hard to bell that cat, though!
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l