paranoia

[John Bailey]

Koestler - Milton - Feuerbach - Ovid
May I submit this thread for the annual Why The Pynchon List is Not
Like the Rest of the Web prize?
I'd never even heard the name Feuerbach until a few weeks ago.
On Sun, Oct 7, 2018 at 5:46 AM gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I love Ovid's riff on this in the Metamorphoses, the succession of ages
> each typifying a particular stage of degeneracy:
>
> The Golden Age- " There was no fear or punishment: there were no
> threatening words to be read, fixed in bronze, no crowd of suppliants
> fearing the judge’s face: they lived safely without protection (Bk I:
> 80-112)."
>
> to the Bronze Age, where the last line is particularly good- "Piety was
> dead, and virgin Astraea, last of all the immortals to depart, herself
> abandoned the blood-drenched earth (Bk 1: 125-150)."
>
> In case any one is interested:
> http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph.htm
>
> These stages seem to have crept into the modern era. In Smollett's Don
> Quixote (Volume I, Book II pg. 111) : "There was no fraud, no deceit, no
> malice intermixed with plain-dealing truth: justice then, kept within her
> proper bounds, undisturbed and unbiased by interest or favour, which now
> impair, confound, and persecute her so much: law was not then, centered in
> the arbitrary bosom of the judge, for, at that time, there was neither
> cause nor contest."
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 6, 2018 at 1:41 PM Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I opine with Feuerbach that humans cannot tolerate their own goodness, so
> > they package it up into a deity or so and project outward into the heavens,
> > or into the powerful forces of the Earth. It is the same with the essential
> > human incapacity for tolerating our evil. Nietzsche tried to save the day,
> > but few humans had ears with which to hear.
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l