Question concerning GR

[David Morris]

"Free" of control, to open to experience without fear, for at least right
now, it.


On Sunday, June 15, 2014, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Those elite are less free because of their need to control.
>
> The preterite are more free because they have no control.
>
> Rats are more free in their maze than their masters watching from above.
>
> Fear of death is GR's diagnosis of our disease.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Saturday, June 14, 2014, Andrew Field <andrewfield2002 at hotmail.co.uk
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','andrewfield2002 at hotmail.co.uk');>> wrote:
>
>> Hey P-Lister's,
>>
>> I'm going through my second reading of GR and it is clear that it is an
>> absolute masterwork. There has been a passage that has always stuck out for
>> me, and I'm undecided what rationale Pynchon gives to the following:
>>
>> "I would see you free [talking to the rats), if I knew how. But it isn't
>> free out here. All the animals, all the plants, the minerals, even other
>> kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an
>> elite few, *who are the loudest to theorize about freedom, but the least
>> free of all.*"
>>
>> The character who speaks it is Weberly Snail, but it is almost an
>> inclusion of the author's voice at this part.
>>
>> - This paragraph mirrors, ostensibly, the key theme of the book,
>> technology and control (or freedom and domination, if you will), but the
>> question is: why are the few elite the least free?
>>
>> To me, it seems this is an evasion on Pynchon's part - an almost
>> throwaway answer - that resists the complication of the obvious reply: they
>> are more free than you because they are not part of the system of control
>> the same way that we are. So who can blame the master for making you a
>> slave, if he becomes more free because of it.
>>
>> From the outset, to me, it seems the elite are more free because they can
>> choose your bondage, and you will always be part of the
>> scientific-technological control system. It doesn't make sense to think the
>> elite are less free because they have to spend their time controlling you.
>> It would amount to, in the master vs. slave dialectic, that the slave is
>> more free. A counter-intuitive answer.
>>
>> *So, who is more free, and why did Pynchon think they were the least
>> free?*
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Andrew Field
>>
>>
>>
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