BtZ42Read

[Keith Davis]

This could link to Slothrop's final scene, or state, as well.

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 12:20 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> www.innergroovemusic.com
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> www.innergroovemusic.com
>
>


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