M & D Deep Duck continues.

[Joseph Tracy]

Bit of a rant here below, a resistance to clever intellectuals from the POV of an average literate mind with a modestly above average interest and knowledge base concerning the history of metaphysics and technology. This is not intended as a personal affront or criticism of Mark but a setting forth of reasons why I am reluctant to accept the theories of Bloom and Van Der Berg whose treatises I have not read. Part of my reluctance with Bloom is based on reading other of his work. My reaction is very mixed to him, some things are clarifying and powerful and some seem carried away with weak premises. I tried to find an online summary of Van Der Berg's thesis  and found nothing in Wikipedia or in the English translation of a larger Dutch wikipedia article. From this I have to wonder how much purchase his ideas have actually claimed.


I simply don't accept these notions of a sudden and dramatic appearance of an inner self in history. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was within, told his disciples to pray in secret.This would be meaningless without a private, if permeable self.  Greeks believed in individual freedom, individual strategic insight, individual philosophic choice, the possibility of governance through public debate and persuasion.   Law going back to the Hammurabic code addresses the individual with individual responsibilities.  The Bible starts with a story of self awareness through inner choice, transgression of a taboo and the pursuit of knowledge.  The Egyptians had images of a soul being weighed against a feather, obviously not about a body. The first person pronoun goes back to the roots of language. Every lie represents a distinction between the inner self and social self, and people have lied for awhile. The Gilgamesh epic is an artful and self aware outward heroization and fictionalized reification of an inner journey and struggle. Do we really think that the writer/s thought this was an historically accurate account of events. Do we think people hearing such a story  then thought they too might literally wrestle with Gods? The Greek Gods and tragedies clearly reveal inner complexity.The idea that ancient literature and myth was understood literally by everyone is absurd.    I don't buy it. Face it Berg and Bloom, this shit's been around since even before the holy Shakespeare.  There is also perhaps less individuation in moderns than some claim.    I find the whole idea of progressive change to be suspect.  Cultural evolution does not swing around the individual genius or act of intellectual challenge even when these things have huge transformative import, it is slow and constantly reverting to primitive habits of group identity and personal advancement. And these dramas play out within social arrangements that bear little distinction from ancient ones.  
   Not everyone is shaped by large civilizations with written records. Even today there are hunter-gatherer tribes which have no deities and accept no mythologies, are in effect happy atheists. There are peaceful and warlike shamanic groups,  with either abstract or personified notions of the metaphysical  .   Our ideas of progressive development have often ignored the real available data in favor of prevailing theories, just as our histories have favored the winning male generals, and patriarchal interpretations of social meaning, property lines drawn by thieves and murderers. Thus the recorded picture is distorted by language, emphasis, sources and cultural limits.   
  I suspect that more than a little of this reluctance to accept an ancient history for the human inner life is related to the absence of evidence for such a thing in modern public discourse where most of what is said is a function of group identities where mistrust and Xenophobia prevail. What we do not want, and what our claims of an inner life provide an escape clause from is personal moral responsibility for contributing to the barbaric, warlike or stupidly greedy behavior of our particular group identity/nation/empire. What we do want is the ability to say I was one of the good guys and opposed these things, but there was just nothing I could do, I am just one person. Most simply say it is all the fault of the Indians, the Islamists, the Jews, the real estate tycoons, the commies, the Americans.  How real is an inner life and personal freedom that is so impotent in shaping the social world? How great a claim can modern man make on such a thing? 
   Even our social interactions are mediated through the economic tactics of Skinnerian programming and overseen by the all seeing eye of the Empire.
  
OK; rant over; will try to behave, but can only promise a peaceable intent.
  
On Jan 16, 2015, at 7:19 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> I say there are, fer sure, or there is such a variety in the manifestation of
> all of its effects, Pynchon wants to make sure we understand that, get
> that in some
> mannered but still phenomenological detail.
> As remarked, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was published again and again in
> three volumes.
> If finding the prosaic nomenclature for our feelings is something that
> happened in human history---
> then Pynchon is modeling that in some way in M & D?
> 
> a Dutch psychiatrist, J. H Van Den Berg, in his most famous book
> places the start of our 'inner self'
> at around 1520, with Luther's challenge to the Church. Harold Bloom
> has famously argued that
> Shakespeare created (our current understanding) of the human in the
> humanly insightful genius
> of how work.
> 
> We can argue that---and I'm sure some will--but I am only throwing
> these out as a postscript
> to The Anatomy of Melancholy...i.e as a perspective on the
> developmental understanding of
> many of the qualities of being "human". Grief provides us--at
> least--some insight?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 12:32 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Can there be different forms of grief?
>> 
>> 
>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>> 
>>> On Jan 16, 2015, at 12:08 AM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I agree (nicely said), but I disagree.
>>> 
>>> Two sides of the same something, seems to me.
>>> 
>>> Grief, like fear, makes one desperate to flee oneself.
>>> Pitch into the hour, so to speak...
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jan 15, 2015, at 8:59 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Nicely said.
>>>>> On Jan 15, 2015, at 7:58 PM, alice malice wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> C.S Lewis may be right, but grief is not like fear to me.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I have fear of grief. To me grief is not like fear. It is the end of
>>>>> fear; there is nothing left to fear because what was feared is. Maybe
>>>>> Mason, like Margaret, is not afraid, but is grieving not for what he
>>>>> fears, or even for what may or may not be, but for what is surely to
>>>>> be and not to be.
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173665
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 6:21 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> p20. 'pitching into the hour, heedless"...why does Grief cause this?
>>>>>> "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."---C.S. Lewis.
>>>>>> TRP even has Dixon share, therefore understand by identifying with,
>>>>>> this feeling.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> a lot of anatomy of grief, melancholy, etc. going on from the get-go.
>>>>>> Dense web of feelings.
>>>>>> -
>>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>> 
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>> 
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l