Re: M&D: Learnédness (vs. Bornness//as reason for hope?)

[Joseph Tracy]

> On Dec 31, 2017, at 3:45 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> "Does ugliness, just like civility or refinement, descend through great hierarchical chains of ownership?
> I think some version of this question underlays the book just like so much of the political philosophy that background the novel, the Hobbeses and Lockes and Hamiltons of what is, we are told, the Age of Reason. Isn't it?  "
> 
> Agreed, That question underlays  this book, Is also the research project of V,  and the horrible momentum of GR and Bleeding Edge.  
>  Inevitability as regards ”human nature” and structures of power is what Siddhartha and Jesus       and many social movements from the Hippies, Luddites,  and abolitionists to the  Anarchists seem to me to have challenged in a radical way.
> The ‘Enlightenment’ wants freedom, but with slaves though that is in internal dispute. The LED is a slave, another owned being, he transcends his status through personal civility and acquired knowledge, but the structure of ownership remains.  It seems to me that this chain is most effectively broken in our story in Dixon who is both born into an attempt at egalitarian society, in a family who is rebellious even within that society and who let’s outward compliance mask an inward freedom. CCoke is in tune with this idea but both Mason and Dixona and C coke start serving a universal scinetific inquiry and end up serving the creation of lines of ownership by the rulers. 
> 
> 
>  I will continue to digress. Because your question is eating at me as to why read this book and invest in a critical response. Learnedness, biology, art, democracy, money, wisdom? Is there reason for hope?
> This book faces the unresolved divisions and self deceptions that make America suck again, and again, and again, addressing deep premises and hypocrisies that were folded into the American experiment from the start and before the start.  It  seems to me to ask whether we   can move on without addressing those foundational discrepancies.
> I don’t believe our struggles come from inbuilt character. In my life I have seen an educated generation that tried to move beyond the history of genocide and racial exploitation and new generation that reject homophobia and sexism. FDR and WW2 seemed to offer a new beginning, even the treatment of former enemies( Japan, Germany etc.) marked a new historical path.  But the mad paranoia of racism and anti communism sent us wildly off course  into the development of an imperial deep state. Pynchon casts the allies in GR not so much as heroic antifascists, but more as  the winning form of corporate militarism to emerge from that war. The  way I read history, the inner circle of the deep state overthrew the socialist reforms of FDR and his stated inclination to allow and encourage free states to emerge from former European colonies. US preeminance became the goal and came at a murderous cost to others. Neither party questioned this imperialism. 
> Since then we have also realized the biospheric threat of the fossil fuel based economy and other dangers of a throw-away economy.  Things don’t look so rosy on planet earth.
>  Whether others agree with that summary of  the US role or not we can all probably agree with the premise that the ugliest tendencies of fascism are on the rise around the world, and the remnants of electoral democracy are so corrupted by elite financial powers that it is hard to imagine a non-catastrophic future. 
>  So what does this have to do with M&D and whether I hold enough personal interest to continue this  group read?  I have my own projects to work on, but for me, Pynchon’s fiction has been part of a big turn in my life away from belief in external saviors, political or spiritual, and toward the pursuit of a meaning-makng process that is eclectic, personal and experimental. What Pychon does is what  artists do in various forms and from various points of view, which is to entertainingly   analyze and satirize and give  form to the very largest and deepest questions about history and our current human realities. What I will do? I really don’t know. I find myself interested in discussion that does not break down into political squabbling and personal insults  but does allow for consideration of the roots of our current dilemmas. 
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>> On Dec 31, 2017, at 11:25 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Third time through this book, and I am struck (again) by just how early in the text the LED comes--as if there should be no question about how many questions there will be about the world of the book.
>> 
>> But the learnedness is interesting to me. The LED is the most civilized member of most every group of talking mammals he encounters. The LED's learnedness is the most foregrounded part of his identity. His civility is acquired. 
>> 
>> And this, some time later, p. 92, amid the rainstorms, the young and learning Seductrices Vroom, pursuing their "malicious fun," trying to trigger what we might assume are at least somewhat born-in sexual responses from our Astronomers (mostly M, though even he may be a more acceptable substitute for the African boys ("Babies, rather," as Austra reminds and admonishes the V sisters) they might otherwise be exploiting) as they await the Transit ... 
>> 
>> "[Austra's] blond Procuresses all begin to expostulate at once, and Mason understands that the vocal assaults of the Vrom Poultry are not inborn, but rather learn'd in this World from their Owners." 
>> 
>> Does ugliness, just like civility or refinement, descend through great hierarchical chains of ownership? 
>> 
>> I think some version of this question underlays the book just like so much of the political philosophy that background the novel, the Hobbeses and Lockes and Hamiltons of what is, we are told, the Age of Reason. Isn't it? 
> 

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