BEg2 ch 28 fuzzy logic

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, 'damned' means in that Calvinist frame.....and, yes, Pynchon is
satirizing this framework
ALL THE WAY....(as he does so much).......from GR thru here....imo.

I assumed, speculatively, that having lost his mojo is why he stopped doing
it....

See P's redefinition of grace in AtD........It is Mather's inverted:
contingent on no actions......

On Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 6:56 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Oh, gee, I hope he’s not damned.
>
> So you’re saying that sentence means that at some point he lost his
> Eurodollars mojo?
> I didn’t see that & am not sure I agree, but thanks for pointing it out!
>
> I think part of the thinking in GR etc is not being mad wild about that
> Protestant ethic to begin with?
>
> So being damned by its tenets may not have the finality Cotton Mather or
> one of the Ur-Slothrops might have preached about.
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 6:44 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Or that Horst is now damned, so to speak?
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 6:36 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I have always read this non-sequitur this way: Horst nostalgizes [sic]
>>> totalistically about when he could do that.
>>> But he hasn't done it for awhile because it was "withdrawn" from him.
>>>
>>> And, of course, the linking of grace with The Protestant Ethic, that
>>> concept (worked out book-length) of P's early influencer,
>>> Max Weber, genius sociologist. Summarized: if you were successful in
>>> life---successful meaning you got rich (enough), that showed
>>> you were saved (in the religious sense), in a state of grace.
>>>
>>> So, if Horst could no longer know which way to bet on Eurodollars then
>>> it may be some kind of observation by Pynchon that the world--its economy--
>>> is now unpredictable, yes?
>>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 5:30 AM Michael Bailey <
>>> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> “Back in the pits, I used to know this Christer coffee trader who told
>>>> me
>>>> it was like  grace, something you don’t ask for. Just comes. Of course
>>>> it
>>>> can also be withdrawn at any time. Like when I always knew which way to
>>>> bet
>>>> on Eurodollars.
>>>>
>>>> - non sequitur? Knowing which way to bet on Eurodollars doesn’t follow
>>>> from
>>>> “it can be withdrawn at any time.”
>>>>
>>>> That “it can be withdrawn” is not the lead-in to his next words, then,
>>>> but
>>>> the culmination and capping-off of the previous lines, of what the
>>>> “Christer coffee trader told him,” I guess - he stops pursuing that
>>>> explanation, partly because the Christian formulation includes that
>>>> possible withdrawing by an external locus of control, and partly
>>>> because in
>>>> advancing to trader from farmer he’s trying to get beyond the “faith of
>>>> his
>>>> fathers” ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The times we shorted Amazon, got out of Lucent when it went to $70 a
>>>> share,
>>>> remember? It wasn’t me that ever ‘knew’ anything. But something did.
>>>> Sudden
>>>> couple extra lines of brain code, who knows. I just followed along.”
>>>>
>>>> - Here he draws the explanation on-board and conflates his brain with a
>>>> computer, mixing the metaphor. Pulling out of religious explanation in
>>>> favor of (pseudo)science.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>          “But then . . . if it was that same weird talent that kept you
>>>> safe . . .”
>>>>
>>>>          “How could it be? How could predicting market behavior be the
>>>> same
>>>> as predicting a terrible disaster?”
>>>>
>>>> “If the two were different forms of the same thing.”
>>>>
>>>>          “Way too anticapitalist for me, babe.”
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Why is that anti capitalist? The whole point of futures trading is to
>>>> supposedly “stabilize the market” and avoid supply chain disasters -
>>>> within
>>>> the framework of “capitalism being a Good Thing.” Why wouldn’t “that
>>>> talent
>>>> extending to saving him from personal disaster” be a natural extension?
>>>>
>>>> I can only think that Horst isn’t buying totally into the whole “divine
>>>> right of captains of industry, elect v preterite predestination and I
>>>> am of
>>>> the Elect,” just as he hadn’t bought into the “Christer” gratuitous
>>>> Grace
>>>> explanation.
>>>>
>>>> Which indicates a healthy lack of hubris? That idea makes it easier to
>>>> like
>>>> him.
>>>>
>>>> Plotwise, if he’d not had the “il ne sait quoi” to oversleep, bye-bye
>>>> Horst.
>>>> Natural for him to wonder.
>>>> Pretty reasonable not to have a solid explanation.
>>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>
>>>