BtZ42Read

[Keith Davis]

Beyond the Zero...beyond nothing, to everything?

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was thinking of it as beyond this life, as well. The behaviorism angle
> is also very insightful. Why not both, and possibly more?
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 11:55 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> I think so. Behaviorism is such a central theme. The screaming also has
>> an echo later in the screaming children in the secret behaviorist
>> experiments, which reinforces this thinking.  There is also a sense in
>> which Beyond the Zero refers to crossing the boundary between life and
>> death. Von Braun describes ’the continuity of “our spiritual
>> existence”after death'. Pynchon seems to me to be asking what kind of
>> spiritual existence comes out of Von Braun’s choices. Is there a sense in
>> which this kind of thinking leads to a lust for self annihilation as a mad
>> alchemical experiment. Bliss Zero.
>>
>> It is going to be very hard not to leap around here in the text.
>> > On Mar 15, 2016, at 5:46 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
>> lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > 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 and  2200. 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.
>> >>
>> >
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
>
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> www.innergroovemusic.com
>
>


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