BE -- "death wish for the planet" why the internet?

[David Morris]

If you really want to discuss the Freudian (NO Brown) subject of Death Wish
in Pynchon's fiction, don't pass go before "Life Against Death."  It was a
foundation of the whole message of GR, and thus any subsequent work. In LAD
Brown re-examines Freud, tries to see where Freud got stuck, and suggests a
Life way forward.  The other two books of the trilogy are fine additions,
but LAD is essential for a GR enthusiast.  GR is saturated in LAD.

David Morris

On Wednesday, March 2, 2016, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> So Pynchon is stuck in the seventies. Just playing that same old cold
> war tune, Gravity's Rainbow, with family in NYC with a 9-11 attack
> tossed in? I don't think so. Ernie may be stuck in the seventies but
> not the author. Nothing has changed? Ernie may have taught history but
> he stopped reading it after 1989.
>
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 4:37 PM, Thomas Eckhardt
> <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >> Why is Pychon using Ernie, a kind of prophet of the market to draw
> >> attention to a death wish contained in the internet? Why the internet
> >> in particular?
> >
> >
> > As I stated before, I believe the main political theme of the novel is
> the
> > continuity of cold war structures after 1989. Ernie's statement is highly
> > relevant in that context ("(...) and don't think anything has changed,
> > kid.").
> >
> > As you wrote in an earlier post, "This question about a collective
> > death-wish for the planet runs like a cold shiver through all Pynchon’s
> > writings."
> >
> > Why the internet?
> >
> > First, the facts as far as I can sift the wheat from the chaff:
> >
> > Ernie's statement that Arpanet was an element of
> > Continuity-of-Government-planning after a nuclear attack is
> controversial.
> > Sez Ernie:
> >
> > "Your Internet, back then the Defense Department called it DARPAnet, the
> > real original purpose was to assure U.S. command and control after a
> nuclear
> > exchange with the Soviets." BE, 419
> >
> > This is from a randomly chosen website:
> >
> > "It was not, however, created as part of any command and control system.
> Nor
> > was the notion of surviving a nuclear attack a consideration according to
> > statements from those who were in charge at the time (...)"
> >
> > http://www.alphr.com/features/369490/top-ten-internet-history-myths
> >
> > The RAND Corporation, however, referenced on p. 419 of BE, supports
> Ernie on
> > this:
> >
> > 'US authorities considered ways to communicate in the aftermath of a
> nuclear
> > attack. How could any sort of "command and control network" survive? Paul
> > Baran, a researcher at RAND, offered a solution: design a more robust
> > communications network using "redundancy" and "digital" technology.'
> >
> > http://www.rand.org/about/history/baran.html
> >
> > Ernie, in what I believe is a conscious reference to JFK's speech on P's
> > part (I had not thought Kennedy was much different from other US
> Presidents
> > until I read James Douglass' brilliant "JFK and the Unspeakable", the
> > "unspeakable" referring to nuclear Armageddon), takes the relation to COG
> > planning for granted. The rhetorical flourish of the "bitter-cold death
> wish
> > for the planet" may be interpreted psychologically or spiritually but I
> > prefer to see it as P's trademark technological Gothic. The internet is
> > being anthropomorphized -- "It was conceived in sin, the worst
> possible." --
> > a child out of a horror movie.
> >
> > The real meaning of this develops in the course of the conversation
> between
> > Maxine and Ernie. It starts with Maxine's observation "Maybe TV back then
> > was brainwashing, but it could never happen today. Nobody's in control of
> > the internet." BE, 419.
> >
> > If there is any satire here, and I believe there is, it is surely
> directed
> > against Maxine. Just listen to her:
> >
> > "And look how it's empowering all these billions of people, the promise,
> the
> > freedom." BE, 420
> >
> > Understandably Ernie gets a little annoyed:
> >
> > "Call it freedom, it's based on control. Everybody connected together,
> > impossible anybody should get lost, ever again. Take the next step,
> connect
> > it to these cell phones, you've got a total web of surveillance,
> > inescapable. (...) What they dream about at the Pentagon, worldwide
> martial
> > law." BE, 420
> >
> > Neither P nor Ernie are obliged to present a coherent argument. If I try
> to
> > make sense of Ernie's various points, it would go something like this
> (see
> > http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19871.htm for further
> > background information): We remember that VL on the political level was
> also
> > concerned with COG planning and martial law in the US. The internet now
> > makes total surveillance possible, and thus brings fascism ever closer to
> > our doorsteps -- put bluntly: total surveillance makes it possible to
> pick
> > out the dissenters and card them off to the camps (REX 84 made it clear
> that
> > this is not a conspiracy fantasy). Fascism also brings us closer to
> nuclear
> > Armageddon because the people in charge then may just be MAD enough to
> think
> > it is in their interest to finally initiate the nuclear first strike
> against
> > Russia that the Joint Chiefs of Staff planned for at the beginning of the
> > 60s -- when JFK openly opposed them.
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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