BE redirect

[Richard Romeo]

I think it rots within and collapses from so many simple and complex contradictions way over my head. If anything it’ll probably kill man’s dominion over the planet first. With that no capitalism.  Maybe then those things u mention can then happen. Who knows

Another unresolvable question is are capitalism and technology so tied together one can’t exist without the other?

rich



> On Jun 2, 2020, at 12:26 PM, Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> The idea of eternal capitalism might be too grim, and sooner or later we all are going to have to get off the bus before it drives off a cliff, if it hasn’t already... I stumbled across this idea during the height of the pandemic, and it’s stuck with me. I’m not sure where I stand on wether or not rivalrous zero-sum games are hardwired into human nature. Will we evolve into the below criteria?:
> 
> Creating loop closure within complicated man-made systems
> Having the right relationship between complex natural and complicated man-made systems
> Creating anti-rivalrous environments within which exponential technology does not threaten our existence
> 
> https://futurethinkers.org/daniel-schmachtenberger-generator-functions/
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>>> On Jun 1, 2020, at 6:11 PM, gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>> 
>> modern finance is mostly alchemy now. I doubt 90% of those on the street
>> making millions could explain exactly what they do. alot people hate
>> capitalism and rightly so in many instances but it's gonna be hard to kill
>> 
>> 100% agree man... a-and most modern finance is computer algorithm driven, so there are very little rapidly diminishing human inputs... your comment reminds me of kpunk, or Mark Fisher's book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative
>> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism:_Is_There_No_Alternative%3F). It's a little over 10 years old and there really hasn't been a suitable alternative to capitalism proposed and/or developed despite the fact that we've had two major existential crises (2008 & COVID)... 
>> 
>>> On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 5:00 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> u could be right about Rosemary's Baby being some great feminist horror. my
>>> money is on Carnival of Souls.
>>> 
>>> u know Im reading V again and it's amazing to me he was in his youngish 20s
>>> when he wrote it, with such world-weariness; like I felt about BE, a man in
>>> his late 70s to write with such vigor (though I have alot of issues with
>>> the book)
>>> 
>>> Pynchon's villains in the later books are front and center--no
>>> sugar-coating romance of Blicero with the Scarsdale V, Mr Ice types.  he
>>> lays it out
>>> 
>>> so why convolute things.
>>> 
>>> modern finance is mostly alchemy now. I doubt 90% of those on the street
>>> making millions could explain exactly what they do. alot people hate
>>> capitalism and rightly so in many instances but it's gonna be hard to kill
>>> 
>>> that;s the thing. the system is like that feeling one had under
>>> psychedelics that everything was this massive beautiful thing that even
>>> evil and other shit would be absorbed by the sheer size and weight of it (I
>>> know this sounds trite) with no fuss or muss (though I did see rumsfeld
>>> emerge out the side of W's head once like some horror from Carpenter's The
>>> Thing but that's another story). that's modern capitalism, it just absorbs
>>> everything but it's not a beautiful thing. it's an efficient thing. and woe
>>> to us all
>>> 
>>> finally, that is what Pynchon does, the good old misdirect personified.
>>> good way not to be played out or irrelevant soon after not that he probably
>>> cares about that all that much
>>> 
>>> rich
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 4:09 AM Cometman via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> > Thanks, rich, for the kind words. I did suspect the doctor, but it’s nice
>>> > to know. The whole story of Rosemary’s Baby has probably been analyzed in
>>> > feminist terms as the patriarchy presiding over the ceding of autonomy in
>>> > child rearing, hasn’t it?
>>> > My analysis of the choice of villain in BE needs a little work.
>>> > We know what we know (although there is more info than my buffers can
>>> > store - I guess that is why tv news repeats a manageable number of facts
>>> > over and over, that and supporting a narrative, of course) but we don’t
>>> > know the full extent of what we don’t know.
>>> >
>>> > But I do know that Horst’s unoccupied office was not part of
>>> > Cantor-Fitzgerald, so the direction of attention would be towards the
>>> > relatively humble sphere of commodity trading rather than municipal bonds.
>>> > And the notion that he’s able to continue his trading in the Midwest, and
>>> > even make a vacation of it for himself and their sons, suggests a focus on
>>> > the ways life goes on after a cataclysmic event.
>>> > The rise of gaming and its implications as a method towards social control
>>> > (at one point the kids play a game where they shoot people for having bad
>>> > manners, and at another point they inform an adult that, sorry, kids don’t
>>> > read anymore) and away from it (DeepArcher); the financial implications of
>>> > big computing taking its place among multinational movers and shakers in
>>> > the person of Gabriel Ice; the personification of the executive arm of
>>> > neoliberalism in Windust, his undoing, and his human side; the rise of
>>> > Russian influence in the US - all of these and more seem to be larger
>>> > themes in BE than the events of late Fructidor 2001.
>>> > Did the Internet (and by extension, the plot of BE, a-and human progress
>>> > itself) interpret them as damage and route around them?
>>> > --
>>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> >
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l