BtZ42 pages 72-73-74

[David Morris]

WE are culture.  Yes, we are all makers of a web of influences, both giving
and taking.  Some would be Kings or Masters.  Others just want to sell
cigarettes or tickets to their latest movie.  And some just want to make
art (and MAYBE sell it).  And some are trying to make things better, or
less worse.

The concept of a Mickey Finn of Culture being slipped into our
movie-theater soda-pop, lulling us into loving Their Control relieves us of
our own responsibility in this world's reality.  It gives Them too much
credit by giving US to little credit.

David Morris

On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 2:57 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> > What a way to drive home the control by conditioning theme.
>
> Or one could notice the pop songs, movies, and brand / advertising
> allusions throughout GR, often with a wink such as Roger & Jessica's "cute
> meet". Culture -- any culture -- IS a web of conditioning. And the more
> effective that conditioning is, the more "natural," universal, and
> inevitable will seem the conditioned behavior or attitude.
>
> It's so cute when a world which puts thousands of times more resources
> into advertising, PR, and propaganda than into psychological research finds
> time for an anxiety attack  over hypnosis, behaviorism, subliminal prompts,
> neuro-linguistic programming, and other threats posed by (what else?)
> science.
>
> Auden: "Of course behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a
> no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical
> appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed
> in public."
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 6:42 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Some commentator says Pynchon 'deliberately' misspells *segway *on page
>> 72 (Miller edition) Why?
>> (that's my why?)
>>
>> p. 74 Why is Pirate's prostate aching after his ejaculation? Isn't that
>> what unejaculating "blue balls" cause?
>>
>> "Like every man growing up in England, he was conditioned to, etc......
>> fetishes...." When first read it hit me that my 'normal' sexual desires,
>> previously understood as natural, universal--which I guess they are--are
>> still culture-bound. What a way to drive home the control by conditioning
>> theme. We've all been there in some way.
>> Imagine any young person still reading this today for the first time??
>>
>
>
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