"The rent's too high"

[David Morris]

OK, I buy that in theory, but in this real world how could WE ever "return"
or invent a civilization without an "Authority" that regulates social
interaction, and by "social" I mean global.

Pynchon has always toyed with Anarchy, but he knows better. It is just a
polemic tool that is farcical at best.

David

On Saturday, January 7, 2017, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Logically, it is finding one or more not built on cruelty proving he
> overgeneralized mostly by
> writing about the Western world he knew so deeply.
>
> Not too much awareness of other civilizations which anthropologists
> and others were finding.
>
> Or by redefining most of the shallow definitions of cruelty, which he
> sorta did.
> See self-overcoming or that "Overman" concept.
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 2:38 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','fqmorris at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
>> Didn't Nietzsche say something like all civilization is built on
>> cruelty?  But what's the alternative?
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, January 7, 2017, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','allan.balliett at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>>
>>> I didn't see this mentioned here so I'll insert it.
>>>
>>> Property taxes are another form of rent. Even when the property is owned
>>> 'free and clear' and the landlord or banker is vanquished, property taxes
>>> come due regularly with an unsentimental threat to pay or face confiscation.
>>>
>>> I digress...
>>>
>>> I used to spend a lot of time  checking out "homesteader" holdings when
>>> I was younger. I was always impressed by how thoroughly they were reducing
>>> the actual cash needed for survival. Most back-to-the-landers (better
>>> description) were well aware that they had to pull together enough cash
>>> each year to pay their taxes or they'd lose their holdings. Usually this
>>> meant some sort of  off-the-land seasonal employment (fruit picking or
>>> Christmas retail) but often it meant planting fine lumber trees which would
>>>  be sold off to lumber companies a tree at a time to make ends meet when
>>> the land holder got too old or too crotchety to bring in the cash. The new
>>> plagues of boring beetles in the US must be upsetting a lot of
>>> best-laid-plans coast-to-coast nowadays.(Didja know that when I started
>>> non-toxic farming 30 years ago that there were locust fence posts in some
>>> fence lines that had been standing for nearly a hundred
>>> years?Traditionally, locust was so innately rot-proof that it outlasted
>>> other hardwood fence posts at a ratio of about 4 to 1 (If your posts were
>>> oak you'd replace them 4 times before you would have had to replace a
>>> locust post.) Now, thanks to chaos in the natural order (here in WV most
>>> likely caused by precipitation of toxic discharges of smoke stacks
>>> somewhere in the mid-West acidifying the soils enough to disrupt the
>>> primordial soil foodweb even on 'virgin soils' enough that entropy of a
>>> system that had maintained itself through millennia ensued) In the past
>>> dozen years more and more locusts are infected with a 'heartwood fungus'
>>> that causes the locust to produce a wood that is essentially not rot
>>> resistant at all and certainly doesn't hold in the soil any longer than a
>>> good oak post.
>>>
>>> -Allan in WV
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 8:18 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> :-)
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > Except for yours which is being raised.
>>>> >
>>>> > On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:33 AM, Mark Thibodeau <
>>>> jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>>>> > wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Every time I see this goddamn discussion thread re-appear in my
>>>> inbox,
>>>> >> I get nervous all over again.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Jeez with the RENT crap already!
>>>> >>
>>>> >> ;-)
>>>> >>
>>>> >> YOPJ
>>>> >>
>>>> >> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 6:35 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> >> > Or even, thinking of the lifelong power/ domination theme, all
>>>> about "
>>>> >> > structured subjugation", a phrase I like learned in an essay on
>>>> >> > globalization, which is not, or not just, " everything solid
>>>> melting into
>>>> >> > air" these days, something Pynchon also knew in his (only)
>>>> pre-modernity
>>>> >> > novel, Mason& Dixon.
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > Sent from my iPad
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> >> On Jan 7, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >> Isn’t the relationship of landlord to renter a rather obvious
>>>> mirror of
>>>> >> >> the more universal Pyncon theme of colonizer and colonized?
>>>> >> >>>
>>>> >> >>> Can the relationship between renters and landlords be
>>>> extrapolated
>>>> >> >>> into a broader existential dynamic? It's worth a thought.
>>>> >> >>>
>>>> >> >>>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Chase Carnot <
>>>> chase.carnot at gmail.com>
>>>> >> >>>> wrote:
>>>> >> >>>> "[...] Crocker Fenway chuckled without mirth. ‘A bit late for
>>>> that,
>>>> >> >>>> Mr.
>>>> >> >>>> Sportello. People like you lose all claim to respect the first
>>>> time
>>>> >> >>>> they pay
>>>> >> >>>> anybody rent.’"
>>>> >> >>>>
>>>> >> >>>> When I saw PT Anderson's IV, this line jumped at me for the
>>>> first
>>>> >> >>>> time. In
>>>> >> >>>> the novel, it must have just washed over me. Anyway, I've been
>>>> >> >>>> thinking
>>>> >> >>>> about diving back into the novel sometime soon with an eye
>>>> toward
>>>> >> >>>> rent as a
>>>> >> >>>> central theme. I felt vindicated when a reading app I use
>>>> cropped the
>>>> >> >>>> IV
>>>> >> >>>> 'Last Supper' poster... it left the center...
>>>> >> >>>>
>>>> >> >>>> https://goo.gl/photos/zaJops8hNHUrju2u6
>>>> >> >>> -
>>>> >> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >> -
>>>> >> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>> >> > -
>>>> >> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
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