terror,paranoia,hilarity and calculated madness on the way to the transit of Venus- tone in chapters 456

[John Bailey]

Wow, Mumford's writing certainly seems eminently re-visitable given
the megamachines that have been installed in order to produce our
smartphones and fast fashion and double beef patties. The inhumanity
of the economic slavery in far-off ex-colonies required to make our
always-already obsolete stuff is matched only by the elegance of the
social system that screens this machine from our consciousness.

Writing this from a country still collectively reeling at our Prime
Minister's executive decision to reinstate a system of knights and
dames, and who then proceeded to bestow a knighthood on Prince
Phillip, the Queen's husband. As one commentator put it, it's like
gifting a Beyonce CD to Jay-Z.

On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 3:10 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Mumfords insights no longer seem the least bit exaggerated. The possibility of re-orientation?  Is it wishful thinking? Must mega-machine civilization collapse in planetary chaos first?
>
> Big leap: one aspect of satori, psychedelic experience, rites of passage is the motif of death and rebirth and connection to the sacredness of the whole. No one wants to die or faces easily the loss of all that is loved and familiar.  But it comes before the state the Buddha called awake. I cannot seem to imagine no matter how much I would like to see it, the large scale collective rebirth which seems needed? And yet one sees it in many individuals and may experience it oneself......
>
>
>
>
> On Jan 27, 2015, at 8:11 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>> As some listers have 'shown' pretty convincingly by inference (not
>> least from examples in our current read, M &B D), Pynchon musta loved
>> technics/science---as Mumford once did. Then, maybe, his 'vision'
>> changed?, as we know Mumford's did.
>>
>> Mumford's MYTH OF THE MACHINE, 2 vols, 1967--1970
>>
>>
>> "In The Myth of the Machine, Mumford insisted upon the reality of the
>> megamachine: the convergence of science, technics and political power
>> as a unified community of interpretation rendering useless and
>> eccentric life-enhancing values. Subversion of this authoritarian
>> kingdom begins with that area of human contact with the world that
>> cannot be successfully repressed - one's feelings about one's
>> self."[3]
>>
>> In the Prologue, Mumford defines his purpose here as "to question both
>> the assumptions and the predictions upon which our commitment to the
>> present forms of scientific and technical progress, treated as ends in
>> themselves, have been based."
>>
>> Mumford dates the emergence of the "Machine" from the pyramid age
>> (primarily with reference to Egypt, but also acknowledging other
>> ancient cultures in that era which produced massive and precisely
>> engineered structures). He uses the term 'Megamachine' to describe the
>> social and bureaucratic structure that enabled a ruler to coordinate a
>> huge workforce to undertake vast and complex projects. Where the
>> projects were public works such as irrigation systems and canals or
>> the construction of cities, Mumford referred to the "labour machine",
>> and where they involved conquest he used the expression "military
>> machine". The term "Megamachine" connoted the social structure in its
>> entirety.
>>
>> William Manson writes that Mumford differed from other major critics
>> of technology in that "[Mumford] emphasized that the ultimate function
>> of social structures ("society") should be to enhance individual
>> development and mutually beneficial patterns of social cooperation.
>> Living in such conducive, humanly-scaled communities, individuals
>> could develop their many-sided capacities (moral/empathic, cognitive,
>> aesthetic, etc.). Technical means, if limited to these human purposes
>> and values, could enhance such growth and social well-being." [4]
>> Manson describes the dystopian vision of the future that Mumford
>> warned of:
>>
>> "The beleaguered- even 'obsolete'-individual would be entirely
>> de-skilled, reduced to a passive, inert, 'trivial accessory to the
>> machine.' Technical surveillance and limitless data-collection--'an
>> all-seeing eye' (Panopticon)--would monitor every 'individual on the
>> planet. Ultimately, the totalitarian technocracy, centralizing and
>> augmenting its 'power-complex,' ignoring the real needs and values of
>> human life, might produce a world 'fit only for machines to live
>> in'"[5]
>>
>> Volume I, Technics and Human Development
>>
>> Volume II, The Pentagon of Power[edit]
>>
>> The "pentagon" refers to:
>>
>> Politics
>> Power (in the sense of physical energy)
>> Productivity
>> Profit
>> Publicity
>>
>> There was clearly also an oblique reference to the Pentagon, regarding
>> which he commented: "...the concrete form of the Pentagon in
>> Washington serves even better than its Soviet counterpart, the
>> Kremlin, as a symbol of totalitarian absolutism."
>>
>> William Manson writes that "Ultimately, Mumford advocated a negative
>> revolt -- resistance, refusal, withdrawal - whereby individuals may
>> reclaim their autonomy and humanly-derived desires and choices."
>>
>> Mumford's 'negative revolt" very like The Counterforce? Among other things.
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 7:02 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>> Yes. Poignant example. Also how technology is an extension of human lusts, fears, addictions, competing  world views.
>>>
>>> Isn't it the other way round? So Technology Extends human lust, fear,
>>> addiction, ideology, and not only these negatives but also love,
>>> security, generosity, cooperation, magnanimity, hope.
>>>
>>> Our boys are taking measurements to draw a boundary, an extension of
>>> law, of agreement and settlement of a bloody conflict.
>>>
>>> But there is a problem with such arguments no matter how we make them.
>>>
>>> Heidegger, who waxes poetically into mystical poetic engineering and
>>> seems a positive on humanity's capacity for wonder, for we can still
>>> live well if we ally ourselves with forces beyond our control and
>>> beyond our grasp, beyond our comprehension. But this doesn't work.
>>> Look at China! India! Look at the postmodern human society. It doesn't
>>> remain fixed and as it evolves its view of Nature shifts. The view of
>>> Nature as a place, as a sacred space, as ineffable spirit, as garden,
>>> as home, as dwelling....and as an unruly and hostile beast that must
>>> be defeated, tamed, exploited...are in flux, and our position to
>>> Nature is also not fixed and so we may long to dwell in the pristine
>>> forest or we may long to cut the forest down and toil in the Good
>>> Earth. Each age in each region responds differently to the call of the
>>> wild. The coal age, now blackening the lungs of the Chinese is not the
>>> coal age of English Industrialization because the technology and more
>>> importantly, how Nature is perceived is different.  Where is the Earth
>>> that is not subjected to this human view, that is not reshaped and
>>> transformed by the extension of our evolving desires and needs? Where
>>> is it that I may dwell in it poetically.
>>>
>>> Dwight Eddins wrote a unique and beautiful book with an unfortunate
>>> name and a difficult introduction, _The Gnostic Pynchon_, and in it he
>>> defines what he calls Pynchon's Orphic Naturalism. I think Eddins is
>>> on to something.
>>>
>>> In any event, Mumford and McLuhan, Pynchon sources, perform magic too,
>>> and are much better reads than Heidegger, let alone those unreadable
>>> D&G guys, and each, in the end puts a positive spin on Technology, but
>>> if you read only the history of what Mumford provides and not hos more
>>> positive view of the future, it seems about right and GR, I've always
>>> thought, takes much from Mumford.
>>> -
>>> 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/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l