Lew and Burke, random thoughts

[ish mailian]

Perhaps I've overstated the point and thus underestimated the impact
of radical ideas, both present in the core, that is, the members
working with national/international movements, and in the rapidly
expanding workforce, many of them arriving with radical ideas.
Moreover, the massive shift of capital, including cap-ex in
communications/transportation tech, from East to West , one of the
themes of the novel, and also one that seems quite prescient, and
peeks into a future we are now living, accelerates the conflict. The
point of false preference is important. In the end, the workers fear
the Master, and tickling his creatures, they surmise, can be far more
dangerous than dynamite or work in the mine. And, as you suggest, they
fear an ideological struggle. At least down there, where the more
dangerous jobs are often given to Others, Death is coupled with Labor.
Does the work make even an inmate in Solzhenitsyn's _GA_ a living man?
Better off than all those dead in the ideological bloodbath?


On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 4:13 PM Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don’t think it’s so much that the mind of the worker is inert until agitated by radical thought, but more likely there is a certain amount of preference falsification. Consider a theoretical strike, now there is  usually a subset of workers collaborating with outside national and/or international movements, and organizing from within. In the beginning that number is small, but environmental conditions, as you noted above, necessitate it to grow such that when a strike occurs, x people will walk out. The process is iterative, but once they reach that critical number  x most of the plant will likely walk out. If you were to examine the intentions of an individual, outside of the strike organizers, you would probably find that in the moment he/she is  more worried at the threat of reprisals from the organizers or peer group than the cause itself, but over tike the thought of simple self preservation can become radical. For the witnesses to history, and the writers, they are one and the same.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Nov 5, 2019, at 12:05 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > What are Radical Thoughts? The working conditions and the wages, the
> > growth of the population of workers and the methods used by
> > governments and business to control the workers, these, it seems to
> > me, are more explosive than radical thought. The idea, if I follow the
> > analogy you've used, that the mind of the worker is inert until
> > agitated by radical thought ignores the body, divides the laboring
> > body from the laboring mind. Put them back together and no radical
> > thought is needed for workers to organize and resist their oppressors.
> > As governments and business expanded, and monopolized,  at an
> > explosive rate, so too did labor,  and the need, on labor's part,  to
> > respond to activities of governments and businesses, activities that
> > wanted to keep labor costs low and labor power inert. Doesn't take a
> > lot of radical thinking to figure out that the monopolized power,
> > allied with governments, with armies, was out to crush any attempt to
> > empower workers. Now, maybe I've misunderstood and simply stated the
> > obvious here, and maybe the point is that by "radical thought" you are
> > suggesting some kind of anarchist thought(s), or the use of airplanes
> > to take out world trade. ?
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 4:25 AM Raphael Saltwood
> > <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> References to Lombroso, seems like that could use some attention.
> >>
> >> Kieselguhr the relatively inert ingredient, into which the nitro seeps. Could probably relate that to the mind of workers (and eventually Lew) exposed to it - is that a similar process to those exposed to radical thought?
> >>
> >> He’s not the Nitroglycerin Kid which would be 6 syllables instead of 4, and in addition to lacking alliteration would also take longer to yell ( like “F*ck not with the Kid, lest instead of f*cker thou become f*ckee!” in GR, which when you’re driving past somebody in a Jeep they might miss the tail end of )(asterisks because I think it’s funnier that way)(as Isaac Asimov claimed Nathan Hale said, I regret that I have but one * for my country!)
> >>
> >> Then the editor opening a jug, after Lew demonstrates concern for the Kid’s right to privacy. Turns out this makes Ponghill find something he likes about the cut of Lew’s jib.
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l