Black Holes in the collective unconscious

[Smoke Teff]

Black hole as zero point as...

if you look at history dialectically, as consisting of antagonisms
between fluctuating anti/theses...

Do we ever return to zero? Or is the return to zero a fallacy?

Sine waves have regular zero-points. Maybe this is a good 2-d model
for our limited, linear brains.

On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 6:45 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> And, in a lesser range of meanings,--maybe I'm repeating myself?--zero
> point, from the energy and Cartesian meaning, is when history starts again
> (in some way).
>
> When the past is overturned (Colonizers imprisoned).
>
> The Black Hole is mentioned in Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy as
> an example of the depravity of the past.
>
> On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 6:16 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The BHoC is brought into the novel in a series of chapters that seem
>> to bring special attention to human eyes. Eyes as representative of
>> human consciousness in the Age of Reason, on the
>> individual/ego-identification level and the
>> collective/governmental/panoptic level. The eye as spherical as the
>> globe. A white globe with a black pupil at its center--we are
>> encouraged to regard Rebekah's, Cornelius's, and Dieter's eyes in such
>> a way within relative proximity to the focus on the Black Hole.
>>
>> White is associated with the hyperactive, obsessively conscious forces
>> of government, of hegemonic power, throughout P's work.
>>
>> The Black Hole is offered as a kind of pupil-like eruption of chaos
>> amid the whitened eyes of the conscious-unto-insanity--perhaps this
>> chaos contains within it the violent promise of racial retribution.
>>
>> Violent anyway because it is the collapse of all that is repressed
>> into a point of unfathomable density.
>>
>>
>> Thinking about it this way, eyes and spheres and planets, the Black
>> Hole seems topographically analogous to the journey toward the center
>> of the Earth in AtD.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 5:07 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > "He is also not so dedicated to Aglican doctrine or hierarchy  as he
>> > is to friendly end equitable human relations and open to any spiritual
>> > experience that might explain the loss of his wife"
>> >
>> > Good thing to emphasize as we follow Mason forward.
>> >
>> > "Only the Taoists and similarly disposed non-dualists seek to diffuse
>> > and neutralize this balance, make it into a circle where death and
>> > life, dark and light,  are equally needful to the whole."
>> >
>> > Is this true beyond the spiritual traditions we've seen depicted in
>> > the first ~300pg. of the novel? Are there not any systems of
>> > mythistory and iconography that assign special and integral power to
>> > the spiritual forces of the night?
>> >
>> > All the rest of this is really great thinking--I like everything you
>> > say about Pynchon's quasi-binary interpretation of the Black Hole of
>> > Calcutta.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 1:58 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> >> Black Hole
>> >>
>> >> Black - absence of light,  presence of all pigments,  mysterious,
>> >> unknowable, unseeable, zoroastrian- spiritual darkness/ equivalent of evil,
>> >> death, unlit underworld,  unillumined space between the stars,  for some
>> >> semitic bible interpreters black skin was the mark of Cain ((cursed son of
>> >> Adam and Eve (Moses married Ethiopian woman and Shulamite of the Song of
>> >> Songs was black skinned so perhaps not so clear)), during colonial perod
>> >> skin color became  the base for a caste system favoring white skin and
>> >> denigrating black, the day night cycle.the pupil of the eye
>> >>
>> >> This relation of consciousness and life  to the light/dark spectrum is
>> >> more than just cultural. Because of its omnipresent physical importance
>> >> there is practically no way for it not to assume  major cultural
>> >> significance. Only the Taoists and similarly disposed non-dualists seek to
>> >> diffuse and neutralize this balance, make it into a circle where death and
>> >> life, dark and light,  are equally needful to the whole.
>> >>
>> >>  Interestingly Pynchon actually moves the reader through many
>> >> permutations of culture and direct experience in relation to blackness and
>> >> whiteness. We find that Mason’s original interest in the stars, that
>> >> ultimate field of light and dark was kindled as an avenue into a larger
>> >> scale of being , but also that he is an earthy man with powerful human
>> >> appetites and that he is conflicted by the subservience of astronomic
>> >> inquiry to the political goals of empire and commerce. He is also not so
>> >> dedicated to Aglican doctrine or hierarchy  as he is to friendly end
>> >> equitable human relations and open to any spiritual experience that might
>> >> explain the loss of his wife. The corruption he sees and the corruption he
>> >> suspects fits the doctrine of original sin, but moral and philosophical
>> >> questions are settled in his life as much by the pressures of survival as by
>> >> a free inquiry.  Even the balance of light and dark in the heavens is not a
>> >> neutral refuge, even the self declared freedom of the American revolution
>> >> continues much of the cruelty of the colonial project.
>> >>
>> >> In my reading Pynchon marks the Black Hole of Calcutta as a combination
>> >> of 2 interconneced  mythic forces. One is the potentially terrifying end of
>> >> the colonial project where all that the white europeans  have done to others
>> >> is visited on them and both individual and culture is forced to see that it
>> >> has created a hell and deserves to inherit that utter dismemberment of
>> >> humanity and biospheric balance that it has pursued. Thus The Black Hole
>> >> comes to haunt  the psyche as the ultimate fear.( This theme of dreadful
>> >> revenge first appears in stories in Slow Learner) The second is an act of
>> >> denial and reversal that is breath-taking in its bold dishonesty and common
>> >> as dirt, the Black Hole becomes a rallying point for for the continuation of
>> >> violence against non-whites.The violence of those who resist subjugation is
>> >> seen as the innate violent nature of the uncivilized and the core difference
>> >> between the fair-skinned and the darker skinned.
>> >>   Is there a 3rd option? A zero point of potential recreation from
>> >> dissolution? Is it simply the gracious acceptance of death and a humble
>> >> rebirth as part of a whole rather than the almighty I.  As I read Pynchon,
>> >> the darkest places always contain this seed.
>> >>
>> >>   As readers we go from the midwinter warmth and safety of  an extended
>> >> egalitarian family, asked to identify with  curious chidren on the brink of
>> >> the adult world,  on a global journey which takes us through the heart of
>> >> the age of enlightenment, from the old world with its many layers through
>> >> the cruel beginnings of corporate capitalism,  sexual adventures, spiritual
>> >> quests,  philosophic questions,  to wilderness and cultural adventures in
>> >> the new world. The entire story is shaped by questions of ownership and
>> >> boundaries, who owns what and how boundaries are made and maintained.
>> >>
>> >>  This could be grim stuff but it can also be hilarious as we smoke pot
>> >> with George Washington and his black Hebrew plantation manager, catch
>> >> Cherrycoke’s subversive jokes, or consider the passionate lovesick flight of
>> >> the mechanical duck of the future.  And Pychon brings in Taoists and
>> >> children’s questions and native people to   point at a different set of
>> >> boundary making forces: rivers, mountains, kivas, earth serpents and feng
>> >> shui masters suggesting magnetic lines, cultural conversation, regard for
>> >> beauty, balance of power, mutual respect, friendliness.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
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>> >>
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
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