BtZ42Read

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 15.03.2016 09:39, Ian Livingston wrote:

> Then there is this pe-orgasmic pause:
>
> “There is no way out. Lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. Screaming 
> holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will 
> it bring its own light? Will the light come before ar after?
>
> But it is already light," GR 5.
>

> Are we beyond the zero at this point? What, exactly, /is/the zero?
>


Could it be that the zero refers to behaviorism? Pavlovian thought is 
via Pointsman very present in this first part of the novel. In this 
context, - please correct me if I'm wrong! - the one (1) refers to the 
successful conditioning, manifest in a concrete behavior. The zero (0) 
refers to the state where the conditioning is extinguished and the 
behavior is not shown by the test subject anymore.  The formulation 
"beyond the zero" then, perhaps, indicates a new phase in human history 
where the thanatoid forces of society start, metaphorically speaking, to 
go beneath our skin. Where science becomes "big science" (and data "big 
data"), and even political mass murder, so very common to history, 
enters a qualitatively new level with the Holocaust, as well as with 
Hiroshima. Sentences like "It is too late", or "It has happened before, 
but there is nothing to compare it to now", would fit such a reading. 
What do you think?



> “Astrologically the beginning of the next aeon, according to the 
> starting-point you select, falls between A.D. 2000 and2200. Starting 
> from the star “0“ and assuming a Platonic month of 2,145 years, one 
> would arrive at A.D. 2154 for the beginning of the Aquarian Age, and 
> at A.D. 1997 if you start from star “a 113.“ The latter date agrees 
> with the longitude of the stars in Ptolemy’s Almagest“ CGJ, Aion, 
> 1959, 94n.
>

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