Target city and greenhouse

[Thomas Eckhardt]

I am certain, and have been for quite some time, that 2 plus 2 equals 4. 
Dostoevsky's underground man, however, makes his point so forcefully 
that he almost manages to convince me otherwise.

The thing is: The underground man is on the defensive.

By the time of Orwell's 1984, things have changed. It is Winston Smith 
who is on the defensive when he says: “Freedom is the freedom to say 
that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

And every thinking person is on the defensive when an "unnamed aide to 
George W. Bush" (most likely Karl Rove) states:

'The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based 
community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions 
emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's 
not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an 
empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're 
studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating 
other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will 
sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to 
just study what we do."'

Rove's statement is smart, honest and accurate. The Empire creates its 
own reality. 2 plus 2 equals 5. This is the world we are living in -- 
Orwell's world, tempered by heavy doses of Huxley's Soma.


Am 21.03.2016 um 12:00 schrieb Mark Kohut:

> The representative underground man in his rants, kicks and punches
> against rationalism says somewhere
> something like I'll believe 2 plus 2 equals 5 if I want.
>
> I suggest Pynchon's vision in GR is to say, even if 2 plus 2 is clearly
> 4.....that rational truth can be used
> in a massivily irrational way by far more than one underground man, in
> fact by whole societies of above
> ground supposedly rational leaders.
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l