Brigadier Bigfoot

Wed Feb 4 05:36:00 CST 2015

 > Are there interesting differences in how cultures engage/avoid 
engagement with death? ... (I)t seems to me that to have consciousness 
is inevitably to have an uneasy, more or less ritualized relationship 
with death. <

Although this universal inevitability is a fact, there nevertheless are 
cultural differences. Even near death experiences do vary in different 
cultures. And personally I find it hard to deny that modern 
science-orientated culture has more problems to handle that "uneasy 
relationship" than most traditional cultures have bzw. had. When you 
look at a guy like Ray Kurzweil and his slightly childish effort to defy 
death by swallowing hundreds of food supply pills every day, this 
becomes obvious. There is, in my opinion, a loss of dignity in our 
modern non-acceptance of death. You may differ on that.

A good ethnological study here is /Dancing on the Grave/ by Nigel Barley:

http://library.alibris.com/Dancing-on-the-Grave-Encounters-with-Death-Nigel-Barley/book/1463958?qcond=6&qsort=c&matches=2

> Seeking to  merge the information of theologians and anthropologists, this book 
looks at the variety of ways in which cultures around the world deal 
with death and give it meaning. In some cultures, most famously Ancient 
Egypt, families would virtually financially ruin themselves in order to 
deal with the death of just one person. Other cultures such as the 
nomadic peoples of southern Africa, simply pull down the roof of their 
dwelling onto the body and move on, while the wrapped bodies in Torajan 
(Indonesian) houses are used as shelves. The reader is guided through 
such diverse areas as myths about death, belief about ways to mourn, 
joking at funerals, post-mortem videos, cannibalism, headhunting and 
royal mortuary ritual. <

On 03.02.2015 17:12, Monte Davis wrote:
> Yes, I see significant influence of Norman O. Brown on GR (with 
> accompanying seasoning of Freud, Jung at al). Yes, Pynchon returns to 
> how cultures engage with death as recently as Xiomara's account of 
> Xibalba and how Windust fit into it (BE 442-444). Yes, as a Pynchon 
> reader all that engages me, and we'll be spending a lot of time soon 
> on questions such as "Is Rebekah haunting Mason or vice versa?".
>
> Beyond the books, though... Are there interesting differences in how 
> cultures engage/avoid engagement with death? Sure: people who 
> routinely hunt game, slaughter livestock, and see lots of their 
> infants, children, and mothers in labor die -- and see ALL their old 
> people die at home -- are bound to be interestingly different from us 
> with our shrink-wrapped protein, vaccinations, and ICUs. But nearly 
> every argument I've seen that "Germany / Europe / America / the West / 
> modernity is uniquely oriented to / in denial of death" is built on a 
> foundation of bogus ethnology/anthropology (one of Freud's 
> specialties, BTW) and grinds some variation of the same axe: that 
> simple, natural, Edenic tribe X -- or more often, unspecified 
> "primitive peoples" -- had the True Mellow Understanding which we've lost.
>
> That's where I bail out. From the earliest Neanderthal burials we know 
> of, through abundant observations of apes, elephants, whales, etc., to 
> Facebook posts about dogs sleeping at gravestones, it seems to me that 
> to have consciousness is inevitably to have an uneasy, more or less 
> ritualized relationship with death.
>
> On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 10:20 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com 
> <mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Of course, we can all squirmingly argue a long ways down this
>     deathslide...(or is it up the sloping tower?)...But, don't we
>     generally think Pynchon, at least, from Brown and others, is trying to
>     focus on which societies, nations, cultures,
>     etc. embody more of the 'death instinct' than others?....
>
>     Do we believe THAT is a viable question? No matter our own personal
>     immersion in The Question?
>
>     Are there not, have there ever been---yes, echoes
>     intentional---societies which could not formulate, no one or, none but
>     the bleeding edgers, the concept of a death instinct. Which did not
>     even think about it???................
>
>
>
>     On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 10:01 AM, Monte Davis
>     <montedavis49 at gmail.com <mailto:montedavis49 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     > This. I've never been able to subscribe wholeheartedly to
>     lucubrations on a
>     > death instinct, or to anyone's (even Pynchon's) case that any
>     one society or
>     > culture has a specially fraught relation to death. Seems to me
>     that for
>     > sound evo-psych reasons, ALL of us spend nearly ALL the time
>     looking away
>     > from the obvious and inevitable... and then -- d'oh! -- find
>     that there's
>     > something numinous and fascinating about it.
>     >
>     > On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 9:42 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com
>     <mailto:richard.romeo at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     >>
>     >> fwiw
>     >>
>     >> if you're alive, you're already a member of a death-orientated
>     system. out
>     >> plots are all charted and we know what they tending towards.
>     cant escape it
>     >> man
>     >>
>     >> rich
>     >>
>     >> On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 9:22 AM, Mark Kohut
>     <mark.kohut at gmail.com <mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     >>>
>     >>> Now there is Bonk, almost a truncated, acronymically compressed
>     >>> rendering of Brock Vond, the Voc Bigfoot.
>     >>>
>     >>> Seems the sexual repressions and attempted expressions in these
>     >>> current chapters which Laura has articulated might be one place to
>     >>> look for such.
>     >>>
>     >>> On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 7:55 AM, Mark Wright
>     <washoepete at gmail.com <mailto:washoepete at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     >>> > Bigfoot and his Bananas point to GR along multiple vectors:
>     banana
>     >>> > breakfasts; phallic forms of rockets and of, well, phallii
>     black,
>     >>> > white, and
>     >>> > of Official Commendation. In PTA's film of IV one catches a
>     whiff also
>     >>> > of
>     >>> > Brigadier Pudding the coprophage. (No wonder there are crippling
>     >>> > therapy
>     >>> > bills!) This is Pynchonian vengeance upon and warning to
>     those who most
>     >>> > eagerly made themselves into the human tools of Death
>     Oriented Systems
>     >>> > (DOSs).
>     >>> >
>     >>> > Where will this theme bob to the surface in Mason & Dixon?
>     >>> -
>     >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>     >>
>     >>
>     >
>
>

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